


New Rule Awakened

by Deiph



Series: Partnerships and Secrets [1]
Category: Grimm (TV)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Crime, Gen, Reveal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-30
Updated: 2012-06-30
Packaged: 2017-11-08 20:45:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/447368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deiph/pseuds/Deiph
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An ancient creature has risen from its sleep and begun a series of murders that threaten to expose not only Nick Burkhardt but the entire Wesen community.</p>
            </blockquote>





	New Rule Awakened

There's a Wesen bar in a back street of a quieter area of town, and at just this moment, a hushed conversation was taking place.

"There's a Grimm in Portland."

"I heard that too! I though they're just myths, you know, nightmares to scare the little ones with..."

"But one _here_? In our city? That can't be good."

"I heard he's different."

"Different how?"

"I heard a Blutbad sides with him."

The man stared at his companions, appalled for words for a moment. "A _Blutbad_ is working _with_ him?"

There was silence at the table as they all considered the immensity of the revelation.

"They're like, _friends_. And it's one of the stronger Blutbad's too. Reformed, but you still wouldn't want to test that..."

"Holy crap."

They all nodded, at a loss for words.

...

It was an average day in Portland, or as normal a day as could be for Nick Burkhardt. He found himself at midday on a warm afternoon, sitting at his desk at the police station, cleaning up the paperwork from his last case. He wasn't sure whether it was a relief or a disappointment to have investigated a murder in a local restaurant and to find there were no Wesen involved.

He'd resisted wanting to be part of that world when he'd first inherited his family's...curse? He wasn't sure if curse was the right word, as it was the opinion of his aunt, whom he loved, but he'd soon realised his other life and its inhabitants weren't as black and white as she had believed. She was a killer, a protector. She was sure that all Wesen were threats to humans and she was only the latest in a long line of nightmares to them. Nick was sure that he would risk his life to protect the Blutbad he considered a friend. His ancestors would turn in their graves.

Nick gave himself a wry smile. He was good at being a cop but he took risks if he thought it was right, and he was no different as a Grimm. He'd risk not killing; he'd risk taking a chance that the world wasn't as all other Grimms had seen it.

He finished typing the last words of his police report and realised his mind was already at Monroe's house. Glancing up, he caught his partner Hank's eye and gave him a nod. "I've got a few things to do," he said, standing from his chair and grabbing his jacket. "Call me if you need me."

"You know I will," smiled Hank, stretching his arms in the air to rid himself of a cramp before returning to the steady sound of typing as he continued with his own backlog of paperwork.

...

Nick drove unrushed to Monroe's house. He never doubted the Blutbad would be there as the man worked from home and seemed to be fairly uninterested in socialising much outside the forced encountered of a Grimm repeatedly turning up at his doorstep unannounced. Well, it used to be forced. Now Nick knew he was welcome, and it was rare he was greeted with a martyred look when he was met at the door, though he usually rang ahead now too which helped him keep in Monroe's good books. The Blutbad wasn't always welcoming of surprises.

He grinned as he knocked on the door, knowing he'd deliberately not called in advance to say he was visiting. It was healthy for the Blutbad to have _some_ surprises in his life.

A sound of footsteps, and then a cautious head ducked its way around the side of a half-opened door. "Oh, you," said Monroe, as he tried to look annoyed at the inconvenience of the visit but caved as Nick beamed at him. "Okay, okay," he grumbled, begrudgingly returning the smile. "Come on in then, Sunshine."

Monroe smirked self-satisfyingly behind Nick's back as his friend took the bait and dropped his expression quickly into a more sedate one in retaliation of the jibe, and paced into the Blutbad's kitchen to find himself a cup of coffee.

"So, what do I owe the honour of this visit?" asked Monroe, as he entered his kitchen and lazed against the side bench, watching Nick already skilfully constructing himself a nice, strong caffeine hit.

Nick shrugged. "No reason," he admitted. He looked up from his preparations with a too-innocent open-eyed expression. "You told me once that I should be a better friend and not just talk about work. So, here I am – hanging out with my friend."

"Ha. Ha," drawled Monroe, shaking his head in disbelief. "I knew that would come back to bite me on the ass."

He did accept the second cup that Nick soon finished making for him, though. It was good coffee. The Grimm was a quick study, Monroe admitted begrudgingly to himself, though there was more than a little affection in the admission.

...

Nick and Monroe settled in to spend a lazy afternoon in the living room, sharing conversations about both halves of their double lives. Monroe liked to hear about Nick's past, before the man even knew he was a Grimm, and Nick liked to hear stories of how Monroe hid his true self from the other humans he spent time with. It was somewhere around then that Monroe finally realised why he felt so inexplicitly comfortable around someone who should have elicited the most guarded reactions of all in him. It was because he _could_ relax around Nick and just be himself. No lies, no hiding one side of himself. Nick was a human and yet knew exactly who and what he was and still seemed to like him. Monroe found that strange. He was pretty certain that he'd cultivated a level of grumpiness and anti-sociability that should have deterred even the most determined efforts for friendship, and yet here Nick was – in his living room, drinking his coffee, not even _trying_ to kill him. Thinking about it, Monroe admitted that was probably a good thing.

"So," said Nick, interrupting the Blutbad's thoughts. "Tell me about your past." He was on to his second cup of coffee and was absentmindedly tapping his finger against the side of the porcelain. "You've now heard most there is to know about me."

Monroe tensed a little. It wasn't territory he was comfortable going into, especially with a Grimm who might reconsider their friendship if he found out what Monroe had done in his Big Bad Wolf days. "Nothing to say about it," he avoided. "The past's the past."

"Oh, come on..." goaded Nick, the cop in him wanting to push against that mental wall. "You're a watchmaker who wears cardigans. How bad could you have been?" He twitched his eyebrow up and grinned good-humouredly, but there was a soft friendliness behind the words which Monroe knew he was weak to. And the guy had eyes like a freakin' hypnotist as he stared waiting for a response...

'"Okay, okay!" shouted Monroe, perhaps a little too loudly, as he raised his hands in defeat. He fell silent a moment while gathering his thoughts. "Don't say I didn't warn you, dude."

Nick found himself turning on the couch to face his friend full on, not wanting to miss a word. He'd been trying to find angles to learn more about the man for months but hadn't had much success.

"I'm not telling you _everything_ ," began Monroe carefully, "but I've probably already hinted that I was more...traditional in my nature, once upon a time."

Nick looked at him seriously, carefully keeping his tone even. "You hunted humans once, didn't you," he said, not really bothering to make it sound like a question.

It was a while before Monroe nodded, and it was a solemn movement. "I'm not proud of it now," he said quietly, "but instinct is a powerful thing." He sighed, expecting Nick to comment but the man didn't. "I used to fight, to hunt, to run wild, to answer every call of my nature that could possibly howl its commands at me. I was strong. Very strong. Yes, I hunted humans, long ago, but not often. I preferred to fight other Wesen, not just Blutbaden." A small glint of wicked delight shone in his eyes for a fraction of a second. "They were more of a challenge, and I wanted to be challenged. I earned myself quite a reputation, you know," he admitted, and Nick could hear the underlying satisfaction in the statement. "Blutbaden are territorial and instinctual. Our alpha males...and females are impressed by boldness and challenges, just like real wolves. And I was definitely an alpha male."

Nick was engrossed and would almost have felt a twinge of intimidation if it weren't for the sharp contradiction of Monroe's current existence staring back at him in the form of neat, often kitsch collectables and other "assorted dorkery" as Wu would have less than tactfully called it.

"Do you miss it?" he asked, surprising the Blutbad with the question. Monroe expected the Grimm would have been more hurt or angry about the admission of human killing, but Nick just seemed philosophical as though he had always known what probably was lurking in his friend's past. Nick had learned enough from his aunt's books to know what behaviour called to Blutbaden, and what effort it must take Monroe to resist it every day.

Monroe shrugged in response to Nick's question, feeling that it couldn't hurt to continue with the path of honesty. "Not the killing of humans. There's no honour in that," he said almost matter-of-factly. "But the challenges against others of my strength... The call of the wild..." His voice had become low, almost animalistic as his eyes saw things from his dark past that still called their wishes to him. "...Yes, I do miss it, but I don't regret my choice to give it all up," he concluded, his eyes refocusing and staring boldly at Nick. "It isn't worth the price."

Nick nodded, knowing that was the truth. They sat in companionable silence for a while, Monroe more relaxed now that a small step into his hidden past was now out in the open, and it had been taken so well. Nick was still an enigma to him. Not only was he a Grimm who rarely killed, but one who had conscience, compassion and open-mindedness far outside what he had known even of ordinary humans. Nick was a new breed, and Monroe liked that. Monroe was a new breed, too.

...

Night had only just fallen when Nick left Monroe's and began his drive back home, wondering not for the first time whether Juliette had started to become suspicious of his longer than usual absences from their lives. She expected him to keep unsociable hours – he was a cop after all – but he did wonder if he was pushing his luck with her a little since his alter ego had come into play.

He reached his street and began the short drive down to his driveway, noticing the lights were on inside which meant Juliette was home. He parked, walked up to his door and let himself him, almost reflexively glancing around as he did so in case any nasty surprises were lurking nearby. He never assumed anything, anymore.

"I'm home!" Nick yelled out by way of a greeting, and walked through into the kitchen to see Juliette had started preparing dinner. He smiled warmly and gave her a quick kiss as he reached for a chopping knife to help her with the vegetables she had laid out on the table.

"How was your day?" Juliette asked, happy to have his recently rare company.

After shrugging, Nick said, "Paperwork heavy," with a mock sigh. "You?"

"One emergency with a poodle, but otherwise it was a pretty ordinary day," she replied, and they fell into a comfortable silence while dinner preparations were made, resulting in a delicious looking salad that Nick brought into the dining area. He was starting to think he'd need to eat a steak and soon, between Juliette and Monroe's cooking choices.

As dinner got underway they chatted occasionally between mouthfuls, talking about plans for Juliette's relatives to visit, and friends they should catch up with. Normal things. It was times like this that Nick felt more hopeful that he could be a Grimm and an ordinary man without losing anything.

They made their way over to couch in front of the TV after dinner was over and the dishes were washed and dried. While Nick sat next to Juliette, his arm around her shoulders, his mind started again trying to talk himself into telling her the truth about what he was now. He wanted to be a good partner to her but he knew he wanted his other world too and it was just too risky to share knowledge of its existence with anyone who couldn't _see_ it. As Monroe had said, most people just can't handle the shock of finding out their world isn't what they thought, and even though Nick was almost certain that Juliette was one of the few who would be strong enough to accept it, 'almost' wasn't an acceptable risk.

He barely paid attention to the film that played on the screen in front of him, but he was relaxed and happy that his life seemed to have found some kind of balance that was holding well enough. They went to bed not long after. Nick slept soundly, Juliette safely asleep next to him.

...

A sharp sound pierced his mind and Nick was jolted out of a surreal dream where he was being served legumes for dinner by Monroe, while Juliette was trying to offer him a raw steak and pointing at a beast out the window. He couldn't imagine what that meant, though as Nick was working on lifting the veil of sleep from his mind, he finally realised it was the sound of his cell phone that had woken him. He creaked one eye open and saw that the first faint hint of dawn was all that indicated the time in an otherwise blackened room. He groaned and reached for his phone, trying to coordinate his fingers enough to remember how to answer it. He hadn't realised he needed to catch up on so much sleep, but he knew he shouldn't be surprised. He was, after all, trying to force two lives into one.

"Burkhardt," he mumbled groggily into the phone, knowing a call at this hour could only mean one thing: Murder.

...

Twenty minutes later Nick arrived at the crime scene and Hank handed him a strong caffeine dose in a styrofoam cup.

They were on the fifth floor of an expensive apartment building. The apartment they were in was currently under close scrutiny by forensics and it didn't take Nick a moment to see what caused the interest. He had stepped carefully through the living room and was peering into the first of the rooms to the side. There was a body of a young girl lying in a bedroom, looking almost peaceful in death.

"Rosa Bentley, aged fifteen," said Hank, with sadness in his eyes. "So young."

"Overdose?" Nick asked matter-of-factly, expecting it was a young trust-fund girl who'd partied just a little too hard last night.

"Possibly not," his partner replied carefully, as he picked up a note from a forensics tray lying on the side table. "This was found on her body by the maid who discovered the scene."

Nick put down his coffee and slipped gloves on to have a look at the page he'd just been offered. It was written in an elegant hand and read:

_The evil prophecy was fulfilled_

_In that very moment she fell back upon the bed that stood there, and lay in a deep sleep_

_And this sleep fell upon the whole castle_

Nick raised an eyebrow as he looked up at his partner. "Well, that's a bit different," he said.

Hank nodded with a wry smile. "Sleeping Beauty," he explained, and when Nick looked at him bemused for a moment, he added, "It's where the lines are from."

The Grimm inside Nick's mind raised its head and sniffed the winds. "Sleeping Beauty?" he said in a carefully neutral tone.

Hank just shrugged and Nick could tell by his expression that was not the end of the story. "You think that's weird? Come look at this."

He led Nick back into the living room and into the next room. It was another bedroom. And two more dead bodies. They appeared to be the girl's parents, and both lay side by side on their bed unmoving. Nick walked up to them and took take a closer look. "The parent's overdosed on sleeping tablets?" he hypothesised, not entirely convinced that the story he was weaving made any sense.

"I agree with you that some kind of overdose or poison is the cause of death," Hank said. "There's no other clear sign of external injury or violence anyway." He sighed. "We'll have to wait to see what Harper says."

...

It was already late in the afternoon by the time Nick and Hank were heading down to the coroner's office to get a report on the initial findings. Dr Harper glanced up from her continuing examination of Rosa's body. The dead parents were on nearby trolleys awaiting their turn.

"Well, Detectives," she began with a raised eyebrow. "You do find the strange ones."

"What're we looking at?" asked Hank, who looked almost proud that their cases interested such an experienced coroner.

"Cause of death is an overdose of some form of tranquiliser injected through the fingertip," said Dr Harper as she pointed to the girl's left hand resting palm-up on the table. "And when I say tranquiliser, I mean one so strong the dose injected could have killed fifty people, so…" She paused giving an expression that let them know just how much of an over-reaction she thought the dose level was, "there's no chance this was an accident."

Nick stepped closer to the body and stared down at it as he spoke. "Were the parents killed the same way?"

Dr Harper nodded. "Yes, I've run preliminary tests and the same substance is showing in their system and they have the same injection point. And before you ask, I have no quick answer for you as to exactly what that substance is. It's no known tranquiliser I've ever heard of, though it seems…organic in origin."

"Organic?" Hank echoed, looking puzzled. "What's that strong in nature that could produce something like this?"

Dr Harper just shook her head. "I have no idea."

Nick let his breath out slowly, still staring silently at the body of the girl. Any doubt he had in his mind that this wasn't under his alter-ego's jurisdiction had just evaporated.

...

Later that evening when Nick was home again after a fruitless day trying to find any leads on the triple-murder, he found Juliette had already gone to bed as she had an early start the next morning. He quietly took his phone downstairs and called Monroe to run the day's events past him.

"Not everything's about Wesen you know," Monroe said dismissively, and Nick could almost hear the shrug through the phone. "Could just be some nut job poisoning people."

"With a highly potent, unknown, organic substance, _and_ while leaving a note with lines from Grimm's Fairy Tales?" argued Nick, letting a tone of disbelief into his voice as he restlessly paced the room. "Bit past a coincidence. And anyway, why leave a note at all? That worries me the most. If it's a message then it could only be meant for me."

Monroe, who had mainly dismissed Nick's theory so quickly out of mild annoyance that the Grimm had unknowingly rang just at the integral point of a very complex meal preparation and ruined it, became more worried. He sighed as he pushed the now useless ingredients aside and gave his full concentration to the call, following Nick's thought through. "And if the note's meant for you, then they know who and what you are, and where you work." He took a sharp breath in. "Not good, Nick."

Nick stopped pacing his living room for a moment and stood staring into the darkness outside the window. Monroe waited patiently while the seconds ticked by and his friend gathered his thoughts.

"So..." Nick said finally. "If it _is_ Wesen, what type would kill this way?"

There was an expressive sigh on the other end of the line, suggesting the Blutbad thought there was no easy answer to that question. "Honestly, I don't know," he started slowly as his brain scanned through the options. "Nothing common anyway. There's– No, not that..."

"Not what?" Nick interjected quickly, eager for any lead.

"Nooo... you'll think it's stupid."

Nick almost laughed. "Really?" he replied, eyebrows raised. "With everything else you've ever told me, you think I'll start ridiculing you _now_?"

Monroe snorted loud enough for Nick to pull the phone away from his ear for a moment. "Ok, you make a good point," the Blutbad finally said, grudgingly. "Well… look. It's just that there's a _myth_ about a creature that immobilises its prey by injecting a super strong tranquilising serum into them through biting their finger."

"So?" said Nick, a little confused. "That's exactly what we're after! That's sounds pretty standard Wesen behaviour to me, isn't it?"

He heard a different sigh – this one long-suffering.

"Look. Us – Wesen, that is," explained Monroe, "We're...well, _normal_ to each other. But we have urban legends and bogeymen we tell tales about to scare each other. But I'm fairly sure they're not _real_. I mean, next you'll be telling me the Sandman's real or something," he concluded, getting a little worked up at the ridiculousness of the idea.

"You weren't so sure once that Grimms were real either," replied Nick, silencing Monroe with his words. "So, there's no chance that there are any Wesen that others don't know about? No surprises out there at all?"

There was a slightly awkward pause on the other end of the line. "Well...okaaay, I wouldn't say *that*," Monroe admitted finally. "I suppose there's always things lurking that aren't...social enough to be known about. So, okay, maybe the Schlafweber _could_ be real..."

"Schlafweber?" Nick asked quickly, and Monroe replied almost automatically as though quoting a childhood tale.

"Sleep-weaver. They weave threads of sleep through your veins until you fall so deeply into dreams you never wake up again."

"Though these ones aren't just asleep," he said seriously. "They're dead."

They both fell silent, letting his words sink in.

"How do I stop a Schlafweber?" Nick said finally, asking the question Monroe knew was coming.

"I don't know," the Blutbad replied with resignation. "They're just a fairytale."

There was irony there and they both knew it.

...

Nick slept a troubled night of nightmares and dreams, filled with half-formed visions of a creature of shadows crouching over him and forcing his consciousness out of existence. Alarms sounded and he awoke with a start, covered in sweat and feeling as though he had barely closed his eyes. But the alarms weren't just in his dreams; in the real world it was the sound of his cell phone ringing. He stared at it a moment, resisting the thought that was already telling him the outcome of the call. Reaching over, he picked it up and pressed the answer button.

"Another one?" he said heavily.

"Another one," replied the voice of his captain this time, who gave him the address and ended the call.

...

When Nick arrived at the crime scene, there were four bodies. Another girl, this one called Linda York, as well as her parents and a man they soon identified from photos as the girl's uncle. Dr Harper was there in person, which told of the seriousness of the case, and she said "Same M.O." to him quickly before returning to her work. Nick left her and looked around the apartment on his own as Hank hadn't yet arrived. He tried to discern what the two groups of victims had in common. Nothing obvious was the answer.

There was one room he hadn't entered yet, and from it came Captain Renard, his expression tighter than Nick had ever seen it before. "You need to see this," he said tonelessly, and turned to enter the room behind him again without waiting for a response.

Nick felt a chill run through him as he strode forward to follow his captain. What greeted him was a shock he couldn't even comprehend for a few beats of his heart. Soon his reaction was starting to draw interest from the uniformed cops and forensics team already scouring the area, and Renard walked over to put his hand on Nick's shoulder; a rare gesture.

"I know," he said, staring at the walls plastered in sheets of paper on which were crazed drawings of fairytale creatures. Wesen. And in front of the wall, on low shelves, were journals, some flipped open to reveal modern day stories about creatures that walked among humans. "There is something seriously strange going on here."

...

After Renard has ordered the crime scene to be locked down and all the drawings and texts to be transported to the station, Nick found himself back at his desk staring blankly ahead. He wasn't even sure quite how he got back there – for the last hour or so since the discovery he'd felt dazed as his brain raced to work out what had just happened to his world.

If Renard noticed Nick's odd behaviour he didn't mention it and instead had already organised for a large whiteboard to be placed in clear sight. Hank was currently writing on it details of the case so far. The word 'Wesen' was written down. Then 'Jagerbar'. Nick watched in fascinated horror as words were added from his other life while Sergeant Wu read out passages from the journals brought over from the latest victims' home.

"Attention everyone," commanded Renard as he strode out of his office. "This case is top priority and we are going to get not only bad press but a panicked population if we don't solve this one quickly." He gestured to the board. "We now have seven murders, and at the latest crime scene the killer left a room full of delusional drawings and writings about fairytale creatures, indicating we're dealing with someone who has some severe form of psychosis."

"How do we know all this doesn't belong to the victims?" asked Hank, gesturing at the journals when Renard paused for a breath.

"Unlikely," the captain replied with confidence. "There's no indication so far either in the victims' backgrounds or in any other area of their house that they would be the ones who set the room up the way we found it. Also, there were no fingerprints on anything in that room, and they would have had no reason to keep it clean. No, I've already showed photos of the scene to our profiler and I agree with his conclusion – the killer was the designer of that room, he possibly identifies with or considers himself one the creatures he describes, and he wants to leave us a message."

"What's the message?" Nick took a moment to realise the words had come from his own mouth.

Renard looked at him. "No idea," he replied, staring unblinkingly at the Grimm.

...

The rest of the day went by in a flurry of activity though little results were produced. Nick and Hank researched into connections between the victims, but didn't manage to find any links. Sergeant Wu and a handful of other cops on duty poured over the journals found at the scene and summarised the information they found on the whiteboard.

Nick found it surreal. There he was, sitting at his desk in the Portland police station and reading detailed and accurate descriptions of Wesen he had met and occasionally fought appear up on the board in Wu's neat handwriting.

He tried to suppress a yawn as the day was wearing heavy on him after many long hours trying to find any lead to follow. He'd downed more cups of coffee that he even remembered. Renard was keeping the pressure on, letting them know that there was no way in hell he was going to the press to tell them that the Portland Police think that perhaps a fairytale creature killed the victims.

Hank leaned back in his chair, sighing loudly. "I don't know there's a lot more we can do today," he admitted to his partner over their desks.

"I say we call it a day and start fresh tomorrow," Nick replied, nodding his agreement. He was happy that he would finally be able to visit Monroe's house which is where he had been desperate to go since first seeing that unbelievable room full of Wesen secrets. He needed someone to talk about the possibilities of what was _really_ going on.

Renard noticed Hank rising from his chair from where he had been standing over at the whiteboard. He came over to their desks.

"So," he said with a neutral face, not revealing any of his thoughts. "Any updates?"

Hank shook his head, and Nick replied, "Nothing, sir. No connections found between the victims, and no clues to identify the killer. The Sleeping Beauty angle we can tie in to mention of a..." he glanced over at the whiteboard for effect though he knew very well the Wesen's name, "Schlafweber, which our murderer believes is a creature that kills by injecting a lethal dose of a tranquilising serum into its victims."

He almost couldn't believe he'd said that out loud. To his captain, of all people.

"So," summarised Renard, with a quiet sigh of frustration, "all we've got is a murderer obsessed with fairytales, who is acting out parts of a story?"

Hank was the one to reply. "Looks like it," he replied, nodding his head. "There's something dark and nasty going on here, and I get the feeling this is only the tip of the iceberg." He looked to Nick for confirmation of his instinct.

Nick nodded, staring at the whiteboard. "Definitely agree with you there," he said, meaning every word. As he rose from his chair, grabbed his jacket and turned to leave the room, unbeknownst to him Renard watched him intently, for just a moment too long.

...

Nick found himself driving on instinct to Monroe's house. This was getting far out of control and he suspected it was only just beginning. He needed help stopping it before too many truths were exposed.

Pulling up his friend's curb, he parked and walked up the path, thoughts stewing in worry. Monroe opened the door before Nick could even reach out to knock.

"I could smell that bitter scent of inner turmoil wafting off you like a flame-thrower at my door," the Blutbad said dryly before Nick could even ask him how he knew he was there.

"Very...descriptive," Nick commented as he gave a half smile that didn't quite reach his eyes and stepped into the Blutbad's home.

Nick was familiar enough by now with being in Monroe's house that he walked through to the man's kitchen and began making himself and his friend a coffee.

"You sure you need that?" Monroe asked casually when he took the full cup offered to him. "You're more coffee bean than man at the moment," he finished pointedly, tapping his nose for point of evidence.

Nick gave a low laugh, relaxing a little, and feeling not for the first time that he was glad Monroe was in his life. It wasn't all about work – the man was a good friend and had an unlikely ability to make him feel normal.

They both walked over to Monroe's couch and lounged down, Monroe waiting patiently to hear what he knew Nick had come over to tell him.

"There's been another four murders," Nick finally admitted, after the moment of silence.

Monroe took a sharp inhale between his teeth. "That's not good," he replied, shaking his head in disbelief. "Too much attention where we don't want it, too," not wanting to sound crass but it was a point that needed making.

"Yeah," Nick agreed, letting his head fall back against the couch. "And I don't even know where to start fixing it."

The both fell in silence for a few minutes, lost in their thoughts as only the gentle ticking of Monroe's clocks caused any noise in the room at all.

Finally, Nick spoke again as though summarising a decision he'd only just come to. "I think it's time to study my aunt's trailer properly," he said, looking over at his friend. "I've just been reading what I need to know, creature by creature, with every other case to date but I don't think that'll cut it for this one. The killer knows far more than I do and has already left references to other Wesen that I haven't even heard of but might be something crucial to my case. I'm too new to it all, and even you don't know enough about its weaknesses. I have to learn more, and _fast_."

Monroe nodded. "Good idea. Knowledge is power, and we need to be on the same playing field to take him on."

"We?" said Nick, not surprised, but also not wanting to ask Monroe to be too involved. He feared for his friend's safety with Wesen being so much a focus of the killer's attention.

Monroe could see right through Nick's reasoning. "Yes, _we_ ," he said pointedly, as though lightly insulted that Nick would even consider leaving him out of the action. "I'm not as delicate as you seem to think, _Grimm_."

"Okay, okay," Nick grinned, realising his error. His expression quickly turned serious though and he met Monroe's eyes. "Thank you," he said, wanting him to know he meant it.

Monroe nodded solemnly. "Don't mention it." He rose from his chair and paused on the way to returning his now empty cup to the kitchen. "Really," he added, with an unseen shadow of a smirk. "Dude, _don't_ mention it. I have a reputation to uphold you know and to think anyone knows I'd help a Grimm..."

Nick considered throwing his cup at the retreating Blutbad but thought better of it. Why waste good coffee?

...

They left the house soon after and drove to the desolate surrounds where Nick kept his aunt's trailer. Going inside, they stood staring at the immense task in front of them. Tomes lined all available surfaces, and weapons and strange substances and almost indecipherable labels on glass bottles lay carefully ordered amongst them.

They both sighed but there was a stubborn determination to the sound, and they both found space to sit and reached for the nearest books to begin.

The sun slid down below the horizon, letting darkness spread across the city outside. There was near silence in the trailer but for the soft sound of old pages turning within tome after tome as Nick and Monroe sat together, studying the knowledge of the Grimms.

The hours crept by unnoticed, Nick occasionally standing silently to pace over to the old cupboard as he matched a weapon to a creature. Monroe barely glanced up from his study of poisons and potions carefully categorised with spidery writing on ancient pages and nearby vials.

They barely spoke as the sun rose but both stood, stretched the cramps of the night out of their joints, and left the trailer to act out another day of normality. They both knew appearances were important, and Nick couldn't let Juliette or his colleagues know anything was amiss, while Monroe had daytime leads to pursue among his own kind.

Monroe and Nick were back at the trailer again as soon as the sun fell that night, though. They returned the night after that, and the next, until three days had passed and they finally had absorbed the full knowledge of the Grimms as best they could in the limited time they could allow. Nick's police work was getting nowhere – they were running background checks on anyone even loosely connected to the victims, searching security footage of the apartment buildings, even speaking to mythology professors in the hopes of referencing the tales in the journals to any particular culture. So far nothing.

His Wesen research with Monroe barely yielded much more of specific use. Most of what they had found were only stories told to children with no useful details such as how to find or kill a Schlafweber. Over that final night though, Nick had found one curious mention in a very old, slim book of notes that had been pushed inside another larger tome. It gave a passing reference to a 'royal kiss' ending the Schlafweber 's spell. He had discussed it with Monroe for a while but they eventually ran out of thoughts when they couldn't decide whether it was just another reference to a fanciful and fictitious tale, or whether there was any substance to the claim. It hardly mattered though as there was no more information to be found.

Nick was also very aware that the killer hadn't made another move yet, three days after the original two bouts of killings. He knew it would, though. The fact that it hadn't only made it dangerously unpredictable.

It was morning again though dawn hadn't yet broken, and Nick and Monroe were exhausted as they put down the last of their research in the trailer, barely having found opportunities to rest properly while their double lives consumed their time. Nick breathed a loud sigh, more yawn, and stretched his body out to sprawl bonelessly in his chair. He rolled his head to the side to look over at his friend.

"We might not know much more about the Schlafweber but we know as much as we can about any Wesen angle it might throw at us," he said, and while there was frustration in his eyes that they hadn't found more, there was also a new determination and confidence there too that Monroe hadn't witnessed before they had begun their intensive study, but it was one he was glad to see.

"Yeah," Monroe replied with a half grin. "Do you think this'll make me a honourary Grimm now?"

Nick snorted though his eyes twinkled with laughter. "My ancestors would be so proud," he quipped with a crooked grin as he stood from his chair, patted the Blutbad on the back familiarly and made his way out of the trailer to begin the drive back to his work.

...

It had been a long few days, and Monroe decided to go for a walk after he returned home. He enjoyed the fresh air of the dark pre-dawn as he strolled along the pavements that led far away from his house. He turned into a side street, then into a dingy alley lined with broken pavestones and discarded rubbish. He crinkled his nose slightly at the less appealing smells, but the discarded foods – the meats in particular – always called to the beast deep inside him. He shook his head, promising for the millionth time that he wouldn't dumpster dive when he could just visit the butcher's store and get a perfectly juicy steak if he caved that badly. But a salad would satisfy him. Well, maybe not _satisfy_ but the alternative was too risky. Slippery slopes and all that...

While his mind had wandered, he suddenly realised there were other smells in the air. Wesen smells. He froze and looked around, realising that three men were coming towards him, taking different approaches to block any chance of escape. They were all heavily built and thuggish in demeanour. Two were Schakal – jackal-like beasts that were prowling along in response to their leader, a Gestreiftetier. The creature was almost tiger-like in smell, Monroe thought as he kept a careful eye on the trio who were now standing only feet away from him, neatly surrounding him.

"You are the Blutbad who betrays our kind," said the leader, snarling as he spoke. Orange and black flashed across his skin.

Monroe shrugged, trying to talk his way out of the confrontation, though he knew it was futile. "What I do is my own business."

The man laughed, and the jackal-men behind cackled in unison. "No," it said. "I make it _mine_."

"Don't push your luck, Gestreiftetier," murmured Monroe, keeping his tone light but the beast inside him stirred. He was tired and therefore short on patience. Blood red flashed into his eyes and he did nothing to restrain it.

The Gestreiftetier just laughed again and shook his head, letting go of the human mask and revealing the creature beneath. Coarse fur covered its face and sharp teeth jutted out from its gaping mouth. Its companions did the same and revealed grey-brown fur and angular, mocking faces, though a small spark of primal instinct sent an undertone of worry through them as they did. The Blutbad's scent was powerful and they hadn't realised as clearly until they changed. Now they stood in front of their intended victim they could sense the alpha nature of him, not quite hidden by the unassuming human facade.

"We're here to warn you, _traitor_ ," scorned the leader of the small gang. "You side with a Grimm, you make enemies of all of us." He leaned forward, heavy, nasty breath in Monroe's face. "And I know what to do with enemies," he drawled, letting claws slide out of his fingertip and pressing one against the Blutbad's chest.

Monroe let his inner beast have a little more reign, ever so carefully. His lip curled up in a quietly mocking grin, and his pupils widened to pools of black. "I know what to do with enemies, too," he smiled, his voice a deep murmur laden with anticipation and disciplined control.

The Gestreiftetier's companions took a step back, instinct starting to scream in their animal minds. _RUN._

Monroe turned his head slightly, a slightly unhuman move, as he caught them in his stare. He didn't move.

They did. They _ran_.

Slowly, calmly, Monroe let his head turn back to the Gestreiftetier. Some time in the last few moments his would-be attacker realised he was now, in fact, the prey.

There weren't many choices for the man now. He gulped down his fear, let his incisors extend to full length and launched itself in one vicious movement, straight at Monroe's throat.

...

Less than half a minute later, had anyone been watching, they would have seen a mild mannered man walk calmly out of the alleyway muttering something that sounded, curiously, like "Goes for my jugular... Pleeease. We _invented_ that move."

Shaking his head pitifully, Monroe disappeared into the darkness.

...

Nick made his way, bone-tired, into the station. He found himself automatically in front of the coffee pot, pouring pure blackness into the largest mug he could find. There was only skeleton staff present when he arrived so Nick wound his way to his desk and fell heavily into his chair, staring blankly as he retreated into his thoughts. An hour passed without him noticing and soon the captain arrived to work and called a briefing which was due to start in a matter of minutes.

Hank had also walked in a few moments before, and he raised an eyebrow at his partner. "Long night?" he asked, half teasing, as though suggesting Juliette might have something to do with his partner's state.

Nick shrugged and gave a little self-deprecating smile. "My life is all about fairytale creatures, nothing more," he said, knowing there was a lot more truth to that statement than his partner realised. He relaxed back as the caffeine continued luring him back into functional consciousness, and his eyes tracked his captain's movements as the man walked over to start the briefing.

"We are struggling to make any progress with this case and that needs to change," Renard said firmly, eyeing every cop in the room. "We can't afford to make any mistakes. We've now finally finished going through every last piece of paper found at the latest crime scene and have a new angle."

There was a murmur of pleased anticipation in the room at that revelation, though the captain silenced them all with a stare. "We don't know what it means yet, but it seems significant to the fantasy the killer is playing out." He nodded at Wu and as the sergeant stepped forward Nick watched carefully, wondering where this was leading. "Sergeant Wu will explain."

Wu, who had been in charge of sifting through the immense amount of reading material from the crime scene, spoke up. "It's called a Grimm," he said.

Nick choked on his coffee, loudly. Every cop in the room turned to stare at him.

"Sorry," he coughed out, covering his shock quickly. _Grimm? What the hell?_

"Yeaaah..." said Wu slowly, curiously raising an eyebrow at the detective, but just shrugged to himself when Nick didn't offer any more reaction. "I've finished reading through the last of the books, and there's multiple mention of people called Grimms who have some special power to be able to see the true nature of these fairytale creatures. They're like the boogiemen to the beasts as they're born to fight them and protect us mere humans."

A low laugh rippled through the room as the cops gave the reaction Nick hoped they would. He was still trying to mentally regroup as his mind ran furiously through a thousand thoughts about how his two identities had finally just crashed into each other.

No one seemed to notice Nick's inner turmoil as Wu continued his report. "In the journals, these Grimm people are important," he continued. "They're all descendants of the original Brothers Grimm who wrote the tales we're seeing mentioned here." Having finished his summary, Wu gave a quick nod to his captain and took a step back again.

Renard brought the attention back to himself again as he eyed the room carefully before speaking. "I've asked for an initial report from our profiler, and he believes that the killer fears these Grimms. They are integral players in his life and represent a stand against evil. There's a strong chance that there's even a real person in the killer's world that he associates with being a Grimm." Renard looked to Nick as he spoke, and Nick felt like he was caught in headlights, but luckily his captain didn't seem to notice. "Search the angle," Renard continued. "If there's someone out there representing this fear to our killer, I want him found."

Nodding his head to signify his decision, Renard turned and retreated back into his office. Nick stayed sitting where he was, not sure how exactly he was going to work with _this_ new direction.

"Find the Grimm and we break this case," said Hank, determination in his voice as he looked to his partner.

Nick found himself jolted from his private worries at the words and he swallowed hard. Pushing down growing dread, he plastered a wide grin on his face. "Then let's find ourselves a Grimm," he replied, rising from his chair. _And let it not be me_ , Nick added in the privacy of his own mind.

...

Nick and Hank spent the morning and into the early afternoon retreading the paths they had already tried so far in the case, hoping this new information about a Grimm would bring to light the break they were hoping for. They visited the friends, colleagues and other key people in the victim's lives, mentioning the word 'Grimm' to them in case it would help. They separated so that Nick could visit Hannah, the best friend of their first victim, Rosa, at her school, while Hank visited a friend of their second young victim who was currently at home with the flu on the other side of town.

It took a while but finally their new leads paid off. Nick found himself speaking to a pierced, heavy mascara wearing girl who was Hannah. She was fidgeting nervously as she rested back against the fence outside her school, as though unsure whether to share the information she knew.

"Look," said Nick, compelling her to stare into his eyes. "Anything you know could help us catch Rosa's killer. You want that, don't you?"

The girl nodded, down-casting her eyes as though somewhat shamed that she had even considered hiding what she was about to tell the cop in front of her. "Look, it's just for _fun_ , you know," she began quietly. "We would visit this bar downtown, called Hafen. There's lots of normal people there but also different ones, you know...?"

Nick's eyes widened, his mind automatically coming up with the idea that this girl somehow could, unbelievably, see Wesen just as he could. "What do you mean by different?" he asked calmly, realising that the girl was nervous but trying not to show it.

"Well," she continued, shrugging. "They were cool, you know? Some of them, these _boys_..." It was clear from her tone that they were flirting with her and she had liked the attention. "They would tell me and Rosa about how they were really these creatures, but we just couldn't see their true forms. And they'd talk about how there were these Grimms who were like these Angels of Death to them." She had warmed to the story and her eyes were shining with teenage adoration.

Nick, meanwhile, was unsure whether he should be offended at being referred to as an 'Angel of Death', but he was at least relieved that the girl clearly wasn't a Grimm herself as his first outlandish thought had suggested. He really needed to get his mind under control again if he could only find a moment to regroup and think of a strategy to fix this mess.

"Do you know any of their names?" he asked, feeling it was time to start acting like a cop again before he made any stupid mistakes or admissions.

Hannah shook her head. "No," she admitted a little disappointed. "They said it would be dangerous if we knew."

Nick could tell he wasn't going to get any more relevant information from Rosa's friend, so he thanked her for her time and returned to his car. He sat for a moment, idling the engine as he thought about the information he had just learned. While he hoped that the boys Hannah and Rosa had spoken to in the bar weren't actually Wesen, he couldn't see how they would know about Grimm's otherwise. He dialled Hank's number and relayed the update.

Hank gave him a reply he wasn't expecting. "Did you say Hafen was the name of the bar? Because Linda's friend mentioned the same place when I asked her about Grimms."

Nick's instincts were telling him nasty things about this bar, but he also knew there was not a thing he could do about it. "Meet you there then," he said, resigning to the inevitable as he tried to sound casual. He ended the call and revved his engine.

...

Nick managed to regain some of his calm in the time it took to drive to Hafen. After pocketing ID photos of the murdered girls he had fetched from the glovebox of his car, he now stood outside the bar's unassuming facade alongside his partner, both of them staring at the building which seemed surprisingly normal to Hank's eye.

"Where's the black paint and gothic lettering?" he joked, glancing over at Nick with a grin.

"I think that's Anne Rice you're thinking of," Nick quipped back with a smile, shrugging his shoulders.

"Stephenie Meyer," Hank replied automatically before he could stop himself.

"What?"

" _Twilight_ , man," he clarified. "Move with the times."

Nick stared at his partner and raised an eyebrow. Hank had the decency to blush. "I've got a twelve year old niece..." he mumbled suddenly finding the pavement at his feet particularly interesting.

Nick suppressed a smirk and only said, "That's teenage vampires not German fairytales," before stepping forward and pushing open the door.

...

The inside of the bar was dim, and it took their eyes a moment to adjust. _Oh, holy crap_ , was Nick's first thought.

The bar was full of Wesen. Actual Wesen, not just humans pretending to be creatures to impress teenage girls. And they all fell silent and turned their heads to the door to stare at the Grimm who had just walked in.

_Crap_ , Nick thought again.

"Is it just me or is the atmosphere in here kind of...freaky?" murmured Hank, who was looking a little startled by the coordinated staring focused in their direction.

"Maybe they don't get a lot of strangers," Nick replied, his brain supplying a convincing enough explanation to hopefully waylay any suspicion as his partner hadn't quiet yet realised that it was Nick – and only Nick – they were staring at.

He didn't have a lot of options with Hank standing right there, so Nick decided he was going to have to wing his way through this one and hope to god no one decided to panic and cry Grimm.

"Detectives Burkhardt and Griffin," he said loudly, showing his badge as Hank did the same. He pulled out the photos of the two murdered girls from his back pocket and displayed them to the room. "Does anyone recognise either of these girls?"

Silence met them. Shocked silence. The Wesen were of one thought: There was a Grimm – _the_ Grimm – in their bar, and he was talking to them. And he was a cop. That couldn't be good.

An Eisbiber, eyes wide, darted forward after it suddenly decided that being helpful might be the best response. "They've been here," the little man said, his jaw barely raising from where it had dropped wide open when Nick walked in the room. "Only a few times though," he added quickly. "Spoke to a few of the young Jager- I mean boys," it finished in a rush, stepping back a foot, head turning from Nick to Hank and back again.

It had become clear very quickly to the Wesen in the bar that the Grimm's cop partner didn't know about their world, and there wasn't one amongst them who wanted to be identified to the rather on-edge looking Grimm as the one who accidently introduced the human to their secret.

"Can you describe these boys?" asked Hank, trying to use his calming voice as the strange little man looked ready to panic and run. Oddly, thought Hank, it was Nick the man kept staring at, though his partner wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary. Hank put it down to nerves. Some people panicked when they thought they might end up suspects in a police investigation.

"Sorry," the little man apologised, bobbing up and down nervously. "Never paid that much attention. They all look the same." His eyes widened again with anxiety and he quickly stared at Nick, looking away just as quickly when he saw the Grimm was almost not breathing, watching the poor Eisbiber stumble inelegantly through the interview, at risk of revealing everything. "Teenage boys, that is," he blurted out. "They all look the same. You know – young, maybe dark hair, think they might have been a bit muscley..." His voice trailed off as his courage deserted him.

The silence refilled the room, and it was a few heartbeats before Nick remembered to breathe again, deciding that the Eisbiber was no longer about to cause a conversational nightmare. Hank, on the other hand, unwittingly decided to introduce his own.

"Anyone heard of Wesen?" he asked the room loudly. "Or Grimms?"

If they thought the room was silent before, it had been a cacophony of noise compared to that moment.

The occupants of the bar suddenly started breaking their silence. All were shocked, some were defensive, and some were confused as to how the human cop who didn't appear to know about their world was suddenly using words he shouldn't know. There began a deluge of responses:

"Grimm? Ha! Grimm, why would you say that? Never heard of him. Or her. Could be a her... Because I don't know any..."

"I'll show you Wesen, _human_..."

"Why don't you look next to–"

" _SILENCE_!"

Nick had yelled the word out of desperation more than anything, but the room responded instantly. Hank wasn't sure what was happening, but there definitely was something going on that he couldn't quite identify. He also had the oddest feeling that Nick knew more than he was admitting, which was a very strange thought in itself.

"Look," Nick said, trying to gather his thoughts and strategise a path out of this mess. "Those words came up in a case we're working on. We think maybe there are some people about who like role-playing that they're fairytale creatures, and our two victims are somehow connected into this." It wasn't the best explanation ever, but he hoped it would do. "Any help you can give us would be appreciated," he added for good measure, trying to show he wasn't about to pull out a weapon and slaughter them all as they clearly suspected he might. "So," he finished, not believing that he was actually going to have to say the words that were about the come out of his mouth. "As my partner asked: Has anyone heard of Wesen or Grimms?"

It was a truly surreal moment, standing next to Hank, asking a room full of Wesen – all currently slipping in and out of their true forms – _that_ question. It was also a loaded question, because if any of the least courageous in the crowd decided that honesty was the best policy when confronted by a direct question from the actual Grimm asking it, then Nick was _screwed_.

It took a few too-loud heartbeats, but luckily one of the more intelligent Wesen finally spoke up, having realised faster than the others that their world wasn't quite yet out in the open and maybe there was an opportunity to distract away from the truth. "Yeah," it grumbled from a side booth, and Nick saw it morph for a moment into an eagle-like creature. "Sometimes kids come in and act out those role-playing games." He shrugged. "That type of thing's popular at the moment, what with all them vampires and werewolves being all over the movies. Just a different variation on the theme, I guess..."

Nick nodded, breathed out a little shakily as he felt relief that the eagle-man had come up with a convincing enough story. "Makes sense," he said to Hank, looking over at his partner. "Kids do some weird things these days."

Hank relaxed a bit, taking the bait. "Kids these days?" he almost smiled. "You sound like my grandpa."

Grinning widely, perhaps a little too much but it wouldn't hurt to sell it, Nick crinkled his face at the mock insult and decided to go for an out. "So," he said to his partner, "I don't know we've got any concrete leads, but at least we know for sure what connected the two girls. I say we go back to the station to regroup." He had already turned to leave the bar, hoping Hank would take the hint. "We can always come back later if we need to," he added, knowing that he would sooner fight a Reaper than walk in Hafen again.

As sunlight greeted his face, Nick let out a slightly shaky breath. It certainly wasn't the Wesen that caused it; it was the knowledge that he very nearly had his secret spilled which would have done nothing less than turn his life upside down and possibly even make him a 'person of interest' in their own murder investigation.

Hank came out the door behind him, giving a low whistle as he did. "That was one _weird_ crowd," he commented, shaking his head. He turned to look at Nick. "And was it just me or were they acting real freaky around you?"

Nick just looked back with innocence in his eyes. "Maybe I'm more intimidating than you," he replied, letting a mischievous grin curl up his lips.

Hank raised an eyebrow. "Funny," he said, deadpan, and though he relaxed for the most part there was still something about the whole encounter that was niggling at the back of his brain and he couldn't quite put a finger on.

...

As soon as Nick got back in his car ready to return to the station, he dialled Monroe.

"You walked into a _Wesen_ bar?"

It was actually the third time the Blutbad had said it since the call connected, and Nick was having trouble moving the conversation forward.

"As I said already," he explained again. "I didn't have a _choice_."

"Of all the bars in all of Portland..." was all Monroe gave in disbelief, his voice a little rough as he was still trying to recover from the coughing fit he had when Nick had dropped that bombshell. His friend never ceased to amaze – and horrify – him.

"Well," argued Nick, starting to feel a little defensive. "It's not like you ever told me about Hafen!"

Monroe huffed through his phone. "Why would I mention it? It's not like I was ever going to invite you down there for a drink!"

While Nick felt a little offended at that comment, his sensible side could see Monroe's point. Taking a quiet breath he did at least admit to himself that his very presence in Hafen would – and had – put off the clientele, to make a colossal understatement. "Okay," he sighed finally. "Let's just write this one off as a necessary disaster and move on." A grumble and some murmured, possibly sarcastic retort in German greeted him which Nick diplomatically choice to interpret as consent. "So..." he continued, "getting back to the case as a whole – any advice? Because from where I stand, there's a whole lot of threads just waiting to snap and hang us all."

There was a moment's silence on the other end of the line while Monroe calmed down properly and considered the situation. "Look," he began, "if there's any good news here I think it's that people aren't going to believe stories about Wesen and Grimms. They'll think that's just the delusions of some crazy killer's brain, and anything else is just innocent enough games that some kids were role playing."

Nick found himself nodding in agreement as an edge of his tension eased a little. Unfortunately, the respite didn't last long.

"The _bad_ news," Monroe continued a little more solemnly, "is that Wesen are a bunch of compulsive gossips and news that _you_ walked into the bar, and why you came, has probably spread its way all over town already, creating a nice amount of panic and paranoia."

Nick swore softly. He should have thought of that. "So not only do we have a serial killer, we have a city of on-edge Wesen who probably now aren't sure whether they're going to be hunted as suspects or found dead as the next victims."

"You want a paddle for that creek you're rowing up?" summarised the Blutbad succinctly, and Nick just sighed. It really said it all.

After a quick promise that he would keep his friend updated with any news, Nick decided there wasn't much else to do but return to the station and hope some angle would come up that could reveal a nice, simple solution. Hey, he dealt with fairytales, he thought, so why not indulge in a little more fantasy?

...

Upon walking into the station, Nick realised that in fact things could get worse. He didn't even make it to his desk before Captain Renard caught his gaze and motioned curtly for him to enter his private office.

"Somehow the case has leaked into the media," said Renard before Nick had even had a chance to close the office door behind him, giving them privacy. "I've been fielding calls from reporters and frightened citizens wanting to know whether the bogeyman's going to get them, or whether aliens are amongst us..." Frustration and fractured patience, tinged with disappointment as to the intelligence of some of the city's citizens, were clear in his voice. "We need to get on top of this _now_. Tell me you have something."

Nick grimaced, not wanting to disappoint his captain, so he gave him all he had. "We found a connection between the girls – a downtown bar called Hafen. The clientele recognise the girls and knew they were chatting to a group of boys about Wesen and Grimms, but we didn't get any good descriptions of the boys, or much more of anything." He didn't add that it was mainly because his presence there was a ticking time bomb and he was lucky to get what he had.

Renard didn't say anything for a few moments as he absorbed the information with a slight lift of his eyebrow. "Okay," he said finally. "It might not be as clear a lead as I'd hope for, but it's definitely something. Ask Griffin to check for security cameras in and around the bar that might yield a better look at those boys." As Nick nodded, Renard stared into his eyes with a strange intensely. "Whatever you have to do to break this case – do it." He then turned his back on Nick and walked around to his desk chair to slump down in its padding.

Nick could see the tension in the man's shoulders. It was unusual to see his captain so affected by a case, but he could only imagine the pressure he must be under from the mayor, the media and the public now that the case was out in the open. A question suddenly occurred to him. "How did the media find out details of the case?" he asked with a tilt of his head.

Renard just shrugged. "I don't know – I locked this one down pretty tight, but they have their ways."

The telephone on his desk chose that moment to ring, and Nick took the hint and left his captain to do his job.

...

"Your Highness," said the voice on the other end of Renard's line, deep and full of darkness. "Come down to me. I'm waiting for you."

Renard froze for a moment then slammed the phone down and stormed out of his office and into the elevator, pressing the basement button as he did so. The doors closed smoothly behind him as he waiting with decreasing patience to be brought into the gloom of the lower car park. The stress of this case was getting to him. He wasn't stupid; he had made the connection that the sleep-weavers of Wesen myth were very real, but he was finding it a frustratingly slow search to unearth any useful information to use against one. Finally a low bell rang, signalling the opening of the elevator doors, and Renard stepped out into the expanse thankfully empty of humans. He could sense something else though, lurking in the shadows.

Renard clenched his jaw, forcing control as he strode boldly towards the direction that his instincts led him. "Schlafweber," he declared curtly. "Is there some kind of point you're trying to make by coming to my station?" He let a patronising tone slide into his voice to let the creature know he thought nothing of its bold move.

The Schlafweber just laughed; a cruel, whispery sound as it stayed hidden. "You know my point," it mocked. "I awoke from centuries of dreams and discovered the world was a changed place. I want it to be mine again." Renard could hear bitterness in its voice. "I awoke and the Wesen thought I was just a myth, not the living nightmare that I am." Its voice hardened and the darkness moved in the shadows. "I will destroy you, King. The Wesen are running scared of being revealed to the world and they will doubt your ability to lead and protect them, and I've ensured the humans know of my work and hold the same doubt in your ability to keep them safe. I will discredit you in both your worlds and when your power is gone, I will rise in your place."

Renard felt anger simmering deep down inside him, and only endless years of well-honed self control stopped him from letting his mask slip and his true self roar defiance. "You will never have what's mine," he growled into the darkness, letting the threat sound clearly in his voice.

"You can't stop me," the Schlafweber replied mockingly. "I will kill again and even though you know exactly who the murderer is, you can never give your human public the peace of mind they so desperately need by revealing my presence to them. And as for your Wesen subjects... Well, if they hear exactly what creature has risen amongst them again... I am a nightmare that makes you look almost tame in comparison."

Renard sneered in response. "You are past your time," he bit back. "Today's Wesen don't want a ruler that leads through fear alone – they want safety, control, boundaries. Balance. They want to know they are protected from things like you."

"And yet you can't protect them from me, so where does that leave you?" asked the Schlafweber in a hiss of breath.

Renard hated that there was a degree of truth to the creature's words. He had no idea how to kill it as its kind had been considered a myth for so long that there was barely any lore detailing its existence. There also wasn't much he hadn't tried searching through since he'd first realising what creature he was dealing with. He decided to take a gambit. "If you don't consider me a threat, then surely you fear the Grimms?" he asked mildly.

A derisive snort echoed out from the shadows. "Grimms are a nuisance, but I doubt there are any here. They are a violent breed and there are far too many Wesen living comfortably in this city for there to be a Grimm in their midst."

Renard felt a moment of calm satisfaction settle quietly into his mind. So the creature didn't know about Burchardt yet. That was good. That was the ace up his sleeve he had been hoping for. Not for the first time, he let himself feel the unaccustomed sensation of satisfaction about the Grimm's presence. Nick was different – a new, unpredictable breed and therefore one that had slipped under his enemy's radar.

"So, your Highness," spoke the Schlafweber again. "Should I continue to destroy you or will you step aside and admit defeat?"

Renard just smiled, revealing a cold glint in his eyes that would have made lesser creatures run for their lives. "Neither," he answered, his voice low and commanding. "The only thing you will do is die."

His movement was so fast it was barely visible as he leaped forward into the shadows, grabbing at the heaviest area of darkness and feeling violent satisfaction as his hands tightened onto dry, withered flesh. The creature was stronger than he could have guessed though and it tore away from him, pushing him forcefully into the concrete wall behind. Renard felt his ribs break and he winced in pain. It was far stronger than he'd expected, but the cool, calculating side of him thought it was useful to have gained that knowledge. He forced himself to stay upright rather than succumb to his injuries and fall to his knees. He scanned quickly around the darkened car park but the creature had already disappeared. His brain though had processed something out of place as he had turned his head, and as he slowly looked back the sight he saw made him freeze. While the Schlafweber might be gone from the deserted car park, someone else was there instead.

Nick.

And the Grimm was staring at him like he had seen and heard _everything_.

...

"Burkhardt..." Renard began, shocked, then quickly changed tactic. "Nick..." he amended. They stood facing each other across the empty expanse.

Nick was still staring at him, stunned. " _Captain?_ " he replied slowly, almost making it sound like a question. He had no idea what to say. Renard was _Wesen_. His captain was _Wesen_. Nick wasn't sure there was room in his mind for any more shocks today, and this was the mother of them all. "Your _Highness_ ," he managed to voice, finally, eyes wide. "It called you 'your _Highness_ '."

Renard blew out his breath, knowing this conversation was on a knife's edge. "It did," he agreed, not quite sure yet how far to commit.

More silence. And then Nick moved. Not a threatening move, but more an uncertain one as he edged forward towards Renard to face him more closely. "You know what I am," he said, staring Renard straight in the eyes. There was no need to clarify his words. "You can't possibly _not_ know what I am."

After a moment, Renard nodded. "Grimm," he said softly.

And that was how the street cops returning from patrol found them half a minute later.

...

"Sirs?" one of the cops said as the little group of uniformed men stopped in their tracks at the unusual sight of their captain and his detective staring intently at each other, sharing unspoken words.

The spell was broken and Renard shook his head as if to clear it as he broke eye contact with Nick and turned to look at his officers. "Yes?" he said, his tone of voice indicating that any further questioning wouldn't be welcome.

The officer who had spoken took the hint. "Sorry sir," he said quickly, trying to think of something to cover his blunder. "Would you... like us to hold the elevator for you?" He motioned to the doors behind him.

Renard stared at the man a moment longer and then sighed, realising that taking his tension out on innocents wouldn't achieve anything. "Thanks," he nodded, and followed the small group through the metal doors that had just slid open at the touch of the button. He hoped Nick would follow as it wouldn't be wise to leave their moment hanging, unfinished. To his relief, the Grimm did.

...

Nick found Renard like a burning presence next to him in the crowded elevator. He was trying not to stare but the pull was driving him insane. It felt like an interminably long elevator ride as the numbers ticked by to indicate their ride up. Nick gave in to temptation. He turned to sneak a look at his captain, trying even to squint his eyes in a variety of ways in the hope his Grimm ability would take effect and reveal Renard's true self. No luck. The captain just stared straight ahead, looked as he always had, and, much to Nick's frustration, even seemed relatively calm considering he had not moments before been outed as royal Wesen.

Eventually, the elevator gave a small jolt as it reached their floor and the other cops stepped out first, leaving Nick and Renard temporarily alone. Renard didn't speak but instead gave a quick look to Nick and tilted his head towards his office, indicating for his detective to follow.

Nick was right behind him and they were both through the maze of desks and people and into the quickly shuttered privacy of the captain's closed office in a matter of steps, neither of them caring whether anyone on the floor thought their actions strange.

They stood staring at each other, silence expanding into the room. Nick didn't know what emotions to feel – shock, betrayal, anger, confusion.

"You're Wesen," he said finally in a rush, suddenly unable to stand still as the racing emotions within him pushed him into action. He strode closer to Renard and stared at him, shaking his head in disbelief. "You never _told_ me. Why didn't you _tell_ me?"

_Betrayal_ , Nick thought to himself. _That's what I feel. He didn't trust me._ A fraction of a second later reason kicked in and he remembered that he was unlike any other Grimm the Wesen population had ever known. Fair enough he would be judged according to his ancestors' actions. The captain still hadn't spoken; he just stood meeting Nick's stare, his face unreadable. "I wouldn't have tried to kill you," Nick added, feeling it needed to be said though it seemed a ridiculous thing to say to his boss.

Renard smiled at that. "I'm not that easy to kill," he replied, but the tone wasn't challenging; it was friendly if anything. The captain sighed, the tension breaking slightly in him and he took a step backwards to sit lightly against the edge of his desk. "I know you're not like the others," he said after a moment. "But I have my reasons for keeping my secrets hidden."

"What are you?" Nick suddenly blurted, and Renard was surprised the Grimm had managed to hold it in for that long. "Specifically, I mean. What type of Wesen?"

"Not relevant," replied Renard evenly, making it clear in his voice that the subject was closed.

"You're a king," pushed Nick, accepting that the Renard he knew wasn't one who could ever be convinced to talk when he didn't want to, but this slight change of angle might yield results.

"I am," Renard nodded. "Though you weren't meant to know that." The slightest of smiles creased into lines next to his eyes. "Why were you even down in the basement?"

Nick shrugged, allowing the change of subject away from what he wanted to know. "You left so quickly..." he explained. "Something seemed wrong, so I followed you."

"Damn Grimm instincts," Renard murmured, and Nick quirked an eyebrow in confusion. "No one else noticed a thing," the captain clarified with a small shrug. The slight movement caused him to wince and he suddenly remembered the broken ribs inflicted on him by his struggle with the Schlafweber.

He tried to cover his reaction, but Nick was a trained detective and Renard realised he shouldn't have even bothered trying to fool the man.

"You're hurt," Nick said, stating the obvious but coming forward anyway to look for visible signs of injury.

Renard could see the stubborn protector behind the man's eyes and sighed inwardly. "Just a few broken ribs," he explained matter-of-factly. He'd had far worse over his years. "It'll heal."

"It'll heal better if they're bandaged," insisted Nick, and just as Nick knew Renard's personality well, Renard was no stranger to Nick's and knew that the man wasn't likely to let this go. "I'll get you to a hospital."

Renard shook his head. "No hospital. No time for that and I don't want the attention." He let out a faint sigh of frustration. "I don't want the public – either human or Wesen – to see me with any sign of weakness."

Nick just nodded, understanding immediately the position Renard was in after hearing the Schlafweber tell of its plan to undermine the captain's authority. "Okay, then we go somewhere else," he said stubbornly. "I have a friend."

Renard assented. He had kept a close enough eye on Nick to know exactly what 'friend' he was referring to, and he was fairly sure the reformed Blutbad could be trusted.

...

It was late afternoon when Monroe muttered a German curse under his breath in response to the persistent knock on his front door. He had been trying to run through an inventory of his clock parts in preparation for an upcoming order, and he had just lost count entirely at the interruption.

He slowly rose from his chair and went to answer the door. Opening it he experienced two emotions very quickly – one, recognition that it could only be Nick whose timing was that bad when turning up at his door, and two, confusion and distrust at the large figure standing next to him. "Nick…?" he began, eying the taller man and knowing from his scent that he was Wesen. "I'm not taking in strays today."

He slightly regretted that as the 'stray' let off a waft of full-blooded, alpha male testosterone coupled with a scowl.

Nick quickly realised that calling ahead might have been the wiser move. His head went from one Wesen to the other as he quickly raised his hands to plead an end to the standoff. " _Woah_ …!" he said loudly. "He's a friend, Monroe, and he's injured and I need… _we_ need your help." He gave the Blutbad a pleading stare which Monroe knew he was unable to resist.

"Damn it…" Monroe muttered, and grudgingly pulled the door wider to allow them entry into his home.

No one spoke as they made their way into the living room, which was where the Blutbad turned around and fixed his unexpected guests with a frown. "Why come here?" he asked, suspecting it sounded a little rude but still felt it a fair question. "I'm not a doctor." Nick was still staring intently at him with that pleading look. "And stop looking at me like that," Monroe added, rolling his eyes. "I never say I _wouldn't_ help."

The relieved smile that greeted those final words melted Monroe a little, though Nick's next words nearly ruined it. "I would have gone to my place but it could have placed Juliette in danger."

"Oh, _right_ … So you thought, 'Whose life _don't_ I mind risking?'" exclaimed Monroe melodramatically, wondering to himself, not for the first time, why he indulged the Grimm as much as he did.

"No!" Nick said, shocked. "I came here as you're my friend and I trust you more than anyone, and I know you're strong enough to take care of yourself."

There was a moment while Monroe's emotions cycled out of indignation and over into guilt. He sometimes hated Nick's habit of answering his questions honestly in a way that make him feel bad for having ever suspected his motives. "Okay, well…that's fair enough…" he muttered, stumbling over his awkward version of an apology.

He sighed and turned his head to examine Renard properly for the first time since the man had entered his home. He was huge, was Monroe's first thought, and used to giving orders not taking them. That added to the powerful scent coming from him made the Blutbad know exactly who he was dealing with. "Oh, _crap_ …" he murmured.

"Sean Renard," said Renard by way of introducing himself, and Nick had the strangest feeling that he had done it to avoid Monroe accidently referring to him by any other name. Or species.

Regardless of whether that was the case or not, Monroe responded accordingly and nodded almost respectfully in reply. "Welcome," he said. "Where are you hurt?" He was not always one to drag out a conversation unnecessarily.

Renard motioned to his right side underneath his arm. "Broken ribs," he explained, and Monroe gave a sympathetic wince in response and then hustled out of the room to fetch bandages.

As soon as they were alone, Renard turned to look at the Grimm. "Stop staring at me like that," he sighed.

Nick quickly looked down at the floor, slightly embarrassed at being caught. "Like what?" he said, trying for innocent.

Renard stared at him until Nick blushed faintly and met his gaze. "Like you're trying to see through my human appearance," he replied with a tone of disapproval. "It won't work," he continued, "and I'm allowed my privacy. You're not strong enough yet to see me without my consent; my control is too good." He meant it only factually not as a boast and Nick let his breath out slowly, knowing it was true.

"Sorry," said Nick after a short, awkward moment as he regrouped his thoughts. Just because he was a Grimm didn't give him the right to invade privacy without reason, he realised soberly. He looked up with a crooked grin. "You can't blame me for trying, though."

Renard's eyes crinkled slightly in a half-smile, and Nick knew the matter was dropped.

Monroe came back into the room at that moment with a surprisingly large collection of bandages and, what even Nick could smell was a foul-scented paste in a little glass jar. "Oh, sorry," the Blutbad said in response to the two men's crinkled noses, "but it's worth the smell to get the healing properties." He shrugged and looked over at his friend. "It's my grandma's recipe," he added proudly as though Nick would be impressed.

When he didn't quite get the reaction he was hoping for from the Grimm, Monroe just shrugged again and made his way over to Renard who had resigned to the inevitable and having slid off his jacket was already unbuttoning his shirt. As Monroe began applying the paste to Renard's bruised skin, Nick swapped a private look with his captain and the man knew exactly what it meant – Nick was asking permission to fill in his friend on the encounter in the station's car park. Renard gave a barely perceptible nod of assent. He had already decided to commit fully when he had accepted Nick's offer of Monroe's involvement. He couldn't afford to do anything less.

Monroe had finished with the odorous paste and began wrapping firm lengths of bandage around Renard's ribs as the captain held his right arm out to the side awkwardly to allow access. The pain was making itself known again, so he decided to distract himself with the conversation he wanted to hold.

"Where are you up to with your own investigations?" he asked them quietly, unsure whether he would meet resistance to sharing the information he needed. "I don't mean the police investigation," he clarified for Nick's sake.

Nick responded instantly, not even considering that his captain was anything less than trustworthy which meant more to Renard than the Grimm knew. "Nowhere useful," he admitted. "We haven't found much and I can't think of a good course of action when I don't know how to predict the Schlafweber 's movements. There seems to be some connection to the Wesen bar, but now I'm not so sure of its motives. We need to rethink it all," he concluded as he brought his mind back to the encounter he overheard in the station's car park. "I'd been assuming all this time that these murders were a message for me, but they're actually for you."

Renard nodded soberly and began re-buttoning his shirt as Monroe finished his work. "It doesn't know about you, which makes you our strongest hand to play. I will protect you," he said, "but I'm in a tenuous position with my subjects. Too much instinctive distrust of Grimms born into their bones and this isn't the right time to ask them to change – not while they're already running scared. I have to keep my distance, but I will do what I can."

Nick nodded solemnly in gratitude. He understood the precariousness of his captain's position.

"I've tried to find out more about the Schlafweber," Renard admitted, "but I'm struggling against myth and folklore. They've been lost in time for so long that no one has remembered they were ever real, meaning the information on them is scarce to say the least."

Nick glanced quickly at Monroe. "I think we might be able to help with that a little," he began slowly, and Renard's eyes lit up and became sharper, his attention focused. Nick explained, "We checked the Grimm books –"

Renard raised an eyebrow at that, not only very interested at the confirmation that Nick was in possession of the infamous Grimms' history of Wesen, but also that he had trusted a Blutbad enough to reveal them to him.

"–and we found one mention in particular about Schlafweber, which said that they can only be stopped by a royal kiss," Nick concluded.

He suddenly fell still as a mad thought came to him and he turned his head quietly to Monroe whose eyebrows had hit his hairline as his own mind had come to the same conclusion. "You don't think…" Nick started, as they both slowly turned their heads in sync to stare wide-eyed at Renard.

"Your _Highness_ …" said Monroe, gaping with a look of fascinated horror on his face.

Renard found himself leaning back defensively to try and distance himself from the extremely odd behaviour of the two men. And then it hit him. 'Royal kiss'. He let loose a loud exclamation of surprise, disgust, absurdity and relief all rolled into one. "I don't need to _kiss_ it!" he exclaimed, a little more forcefully than intended.

Nick and Monroe's twin expressions were comical, and Renard found himself almost needing to hold back an exhalation of laughter.

"You _are_ royal…" said Nick, not fully convinced, though at the same time something in his brain quietly filed away the fact that Monroe had just revealed that he knew Renard was of royal standing without Nick having to tell him.

"And it does say only a _royal_ kiss will destroy it…" added Monroe, still gaping aghast at what sacrifice the man might have to make for the good of his people.

Renard thought it was well and truly time to put an end to that line of thought. " _NO_ ," he declared forcefully, almost yelling. He paused and sighed again, feeling he had been making that sound a little too much recently. "No," he tried again, his tone lower and more in control. "Royal Kiss. Königlicher Kuss," he said finally, the German rolling smoothly off his tongue. "It's a flower. A very rare one."

Relief quickly followed by a noticeable degree of embarrassment flowed through the expressions of his two companions. Nick in particular was more than a little mortified at having almost suggested to his captain that it was crucial that he kiss the killer to close their case.

"Well, that's saves a lot of awkwardness," declared Monroe with a wry grin as he then proceeded to retreat momentarily into the kitchen to find a beer to settle himself.

Nick nodded, and Renard found himself reflexively doing the same as they went over to the couch and fell down into it to sit in silence until Monroe returned with three beers which they quickly opened and began drinking.

Nick was the one to speak first. "So…" he said, deciding to ask the obvious question. "Where can we find this flower?" He didn't expect it would be simple so Renard's answer surprised him.

"It grows on a rose-like bush that – I'm happy to say – is in my possession."

"Oh. Well. That was...easy," said Nick, looking relieved and confused at the same time.

Monroe thought he might take the opportunity to play with fire a little as his beer was temporarily boosting his courage. "You grow flowers?" he asked, all innocence and curiosity. "You don't look like the kind of Wesen who grows flowers."

Renard presented the Blutbad with a look that could have frozen Daemonfeuer flame in its tracks. Monroe shivered but the rebel in him enjoyed an inner moment of satisfaction at his subtle baiting.

"The flower's called 'royal' as it's been in possession of only the royal Wesen line since memory began," Renard explained, choosing pointedly to get back to business. "It's been reputed to have powerful properties but–", he shrugged matter-of-factly, "neither I nor any of my ancestors have ever been able to discover what use it has, though we have all held experiments with no success."

Nick could see something in his captain's eye that whispered to his instincts that the experiments might have involved test subjects, and that was something he better not ask to deeply about in case he didn't want to hear the answers.

Renard continued, uninterrupted. "All we have ever known is that an ancient lore tells that the flower can stop you from sleeping forever," he said, realisation suddenly shining clearly as to what the cryptic line meant. "I had never understood that before – why you'd want to take something to cause permanent insomnia, though it hadn't ever had that ability when we tested it, but..." he paused to shake his head in amazement, "I misunderstood. It must stop the _Schlafweber_ from forcing you to sleep forever. It must kill it."

A fierce blaze of confidence sparked in him and he realised with a new clarity that having Nick on his side gave him strength in ways he could never access before. Since the day that Nick had come into his Grimm inheritance, Renard knew one day he was going to have to make a firm decision about how to deal with his detective. He had been sure, back then, that one day they would end up having to fight to the death, and it was a thought that had weighed heavy on his conscience. But instead, history changed and Nick had broken the rules and become a different type of Grimm, one that quickly made Renard realise that nothing was set in stone anymore. He made a decision in that moment. He was used to having to think promptly and decisively, and he was sure of his offer when he spoke.

"I'd like you to work for me as my right hand man in the Wesen world," Renard said formally to Nick, in all seriousness. "Our knowledge and skill together would be unbeatable."

Nick didn't respond straight away; the proposition was unexpected and while he was honoured in being offered the position, he knew also that it would be wrong to give a hasty answer. He knew Renard as his police captain, but other than that he knew next to nothing about the man's alter ego. He instinctively trusted him though he suspected Renard lived more on the grey line than Nick would approve of, though he couldn't say why or how he even knew. Perhaps it was those 'Grimm instincts' Renard accused him of having. As he cycled through his thoughts, he found he already knew his answer.

"With all due respect, sir..." he began, unsure whether he should even be referring to his captain as 'sir' in these changed circumstances, "You're my boss in the human world and I have your back all the way, but in _this_ world..." he said more slowly, motioning around him at Monroe's house and the Blutbad himself, "Here I belong to no one. I am a Grimm. I might not be like my ancestors and I might be already breaking the rules, but working under the authority of a Wesen, king or not, might not be my best move if I want to keep control of my life and help maintain order and balance amongst your people for not only their protection but also that of humans." Nick wasn't sure when he'd starting to refer to humans as though he almost wasn't one, but it seemed a minor concern at that moment.

Wearing an inscrutable expression, Renard didn't respond immediately and Nick stayed strong as he held his captain's gaze, confident in the reply he had given. Monroe found himself holding his breath, unwittingly caught up in the moment.

Finally, Renard opened his mouth and spoke. "A fair answer," he said, inwardly pleased at Nick's strength, and Monroe exhaled in relief. "Then be my partner instead."

Even Nick was caught by the immensity of the statement. Was the king of the Wesen offering part of his throne to a Grimm? He wasn't even sure where to begin with that, though it was Renard who spoke again to clarify his offer.

"I would still rule as I do – that wouldn't change," he said, "but you would be more of a hidden partner and that role is something my subjects wouldn't need to know about unless they step out of line. We wouldn't have authority over each other but we will work together to achieve the same goal. Just as we do as cops, we will maintain the peace. I rule, you enforce."

Nick nodded, knowing instinctively that the Grimm inside him approved, and he sealed his fate without a moment of doubt. "I accept," he said and offered his hand to close the deal.

The seriousness and formality of the moment sat heavy in the air until a small squeak came from the vicinity of the Blutbad. Nick and Monroe broke eye contact and turned to look at the man.

Monroe was grinning like a fool. "That was – holy crap – _momentous_ ," he gasped, eyes wide and jaw threatening to fall off if he became any more impressed. "I just witnessed the first ever partnership between a Grimm and a Wesen King! This is _historic_. This is–"

"Not something you can tell anyone about," interjected Renard, raising an eyebrow meaningfully.

It took Monroe a moment, but his brain caught up and his face fell almost comically into disappointment. "Oh, _right_ ," he drew out while nodding his head. " _Secret_ partnership." He tapped the side of his nose to indicate he understood his role was _not_ to spill at the first available opportunity. "You can count on me," he added for good measure. The intensity of the twin stares aimed at him was getting uncomfortable. "More beer?" he blurted out, and grabbed their empty – or half empty – bottles from them, loping into the kitchen to find fresh stock.

Nick smiled in the direction Monroe had left. "I know he's excitable at times, but he can be trusted," he said quietly to Renard.

Renard nodded, no concern at all on his face. "I know," he replied. "You trust him, and I trust your instincts."

It was a good moment, and one where the chaos of their lives was temporarily forgotten.

Monroe came back with three fresh beers, and handed two to the new allies. He seemed to have calmed down and as he lounged back into his chair, he said: "We need a plan."

Nick and Renard didn't need to ask about what. Multiple murders tended to have the effect of coming quickly back to mind.

"It'll kill again soon," said Renard, no doubt in his voice. "Now that it has shown itself to me, it won't wait any longer."

"Why the gap between the killings anyway?" Nick asked, curious as to his captain's – _partner's_ – opinion. "The first two groups of murders were only a day apart and now it's been a week."

Renard's eyes tightened in repressed annoyance. "It's trying to stay unpredictable – it's playing with us," he growled. "The public stays scared as they don't know when the next attack will come, and the Wesen aren't sure how long it will be before their presence is revealed to the world through secrets left at the next crime scene."

They considered the precariousness of the situation. They were living on a knife's edge and they all knew they needed to act now before it was too late.

'I'll fetch the 'Royal Kiss'," Renard continued as his mind began strategising. "I'm sure a powdered version of the flowers will do so I'll make up three vials – one for each of us to keep on hand at all times."

It was Monroe who spoke up. "So... we know how to kill it, but how do we stop a creature we can't find?"

Nick took a slow breath as his brain clicked into place. "Hafen," he said slowly. "It's the only lead we have. We could stake it out, ask around, see if the Schlafweber has been seen talking to anyone there."

The room fell a little too silent as they considered the plan, and Nick felt eyes staring at him. He tried to ignore it but his senses were niggling paranoia at him so he turned his head sidewards towards Renard and looked a little affronted at the attention.

"What?" he said finally, feeling there was something the man clearly had on his mind but he hadn't yet spoken.

It took a moment but the question finally came, taking Nick by surprise.

"You really walked into _Hafen_?" Renard asked, looking at the Grimm with raised eyebrows, which was his equivalent of showing he was both surprised and impressed. Monroe made a few excamations of agreement as he paused in downing his beer. Nick sighed. He could only imagine that his captain had been wanting to say that since the moment Nick had reported in at the station.

He nodded, feeling strangely embarrassed. It's not like he'd known what he was doing at the time, and now it looked like his Blutbad friend was also warming to this new subject.

"He actually asked them about whether they'd heard of Wesen and Grimms," Monroe half-gossiped, half-chortled.

Renard almost smiled. "Now _that_ I would have given anything to see."

Nick felt himself turn a slight shade of red at the teasing attention. "You both try being a Grimm," he retorted, trying to regain some respect. "It's a minefield without a map, and I don't think I did too bad, considering."

His companions decided to cut him some slack, Monroe being slightly less mature about it as Nick turned to glare at the muffled chuckle that inadvertently escaped the Blutbad's mouth before he turned it into a cough.

"So," said Nick, a little disapprovingly. "What do you suggest we do then?"

Renard spoke up, giving Nick a break. "Use your plan," he said. "But you aren't to be the one to go to Hafen for obvious reasons." He turned his head to look over at Monroe. " _You_ should be the one to do it," he suggested to the Blutbad. "Nick can't, and I need to be a very public police captain, leaving you as the best choice to blend in and watch for our killer. The Schlafweber must've been at the bar to find the two girls there, so it might return a third time to stalk its next victim."

"Not meaning to play devil's advocate here," said Nick suddenly as a thought occurred to him. "But how can we know it won't move on from Hafen now it's gone there twice? It might be taking a big risk turning up a third time."

Renard gave a small smile of satisfaction. "It's likely a creature of habit," he said. "We all are to some degree. Wesen can't help but fall into their instinctive behaviour, following the same story through when the opportunity presents itself. We already know the Schlafweber associates with the Sleeping Beauty tale, therefore that's its weakness. It needs to find its princess and send her and all those in her household into eternal sleep." He paused as his expression hardened. "Though this time we will be waiting for it."

Monroe tilted his head slightly as he considered the situation. "So...my job is to stake out Hafen by drinking at the bar all day?" He found himself nodding with far too much satisfaction. "I can do that."

Nick hid a quick smile. "It would be best if you kept the drinking to a minimum, as we need you _sober_ to keep an eye out for the Schlafweber."

"Yeah, yeah," Monroe grumbled, and they both knew he was only joking and that he would be nothing but professional when the time came. "Though the City of Portland will pick up my tab, right...?"

It was Renard who offered him the glare to shoot down all hopes Monroe might have been holding.

...

They left each other's company as night fell with the decision to begin their work in the morning. Renard and Nick would meet as usual at the station, and Monroe would be at the bar as soon as soon as it opened.

Nick slept deeply that night though his dreams were full of shadows and death. He awoke in the morning with a focused mind and the pull of the hunt, born of Grimm instinct. Juliette stirred half-awake and rolled over to wrap her arm around him as they lay together in bed.

"I've barely seen you recently," she murmured into his chest. "You're working too hard."

Nick felt the usual guilt play at the back of his mind. "I'm sorry," he whispered, not wanting to wake her too much. "I'm safe, I promise, and it's all important." It was a half-truth but one he could accept saying.

He felt her sound of protest vibrate against his skin, though he could tell it was only part serious.

"I knew what you were when I met you, _Detective_ ," she said philosophically, and he could hear the light acceptance in her voice.

_But you don't know what I am now_ , Nick thought as he kissed her lightly on the top of the head and eased his way out of bed.

...

When Nick reached the station there was the usual contingent of cops on his floor, and he could see Renard seated at his desk speaking on his phone. Hank was by the coffee machine along with Wu and a few more officers, and Nick made his way over to greet them. He felt the unaccustomed pressure of a small blade strapped against his hip, hidden under his gun holster, and while he couldn't quite explain to himself what had caused him to go to his aunt's trailer on his way to work and select it from her collection, he had done so and felt strangely calm knowing it was there.

Nick nodded at Hank, grabbed the coffee pot and started pouring his morning drink. He hadn't even noticed Renard exit his office, but he turned his head as he felt a presence beside him and a lull in the conversation around him.

"Any news?" the captain asked the group at the coffee machine. He had casually moved to stand next to Nick.

Wu shook his head and Hank did the same.

"Nothing solid," said Hank, taking the lead. "I checked the bar for security cameras but they don't have any, but there was one outside on a neighbouring building. There's a shot of what could be the boys that came in with our victims, but it's a bad angle. I thought Nick and I could take a copy to the girls' schools and show it around –see if anyone recognises them. It's a long shot as you can barely see the faces, but it's the best we've got to go on."

Renard nodded at him, pleased. "Good," he said, and Nick silently thought that the man meant it; that he was happy that Hank had found a reason to leave the station just now. "Though go without Burkhardt as I need him for something else," he added as a supposed afterthought.

Hank looked surprised and didn't reply for a moment as he waited for the captain to clarify what the 'something else' was, but Renard didn't choose to elaborate and a quick glance at Nick only resulting in his partner giving a small shrug as though he didn't know what was expected of him either. "Okaaay," Hank said slowly, covering the slight awkwardness of the moment. "Well, I'll call in if I find anything."

Nick was clever enough to realise that Renard didn't want to be separated from him today of all days, not while Monroe was staking out Hafen and might, at any moment, call them to action.

"Sergeant," said Renard, dragging Nick out of his musings. Wu looked up attentively from his coffee, waiting for instruction. "Today I want you to go back to both crime scenes and search them again, then speak to the neighbours again. After that, go over all the fairytale journals again. There must be something we're missing; some message we're not seeing. We're short of anything useful at the moment and I need a break in this case soon."

Wu nodded in understanding. "Yes, sir."

As the small group returned their focus to quickly finishing their drinks, Nick felt a light brush against the side of his hand and realised it was Renard's fingers nimbly pushing a small glass vial into his palm. He grasped it and wrapped his fingers around it, casually sliding it into his jacket pocket after a glance to make sure none of his fellow cops had noticed. Somewhere in his mind he was impressed by the confident stealth of the exchange, and he found himself realising it was no surprise he had never suspected Renard of any suspicious behaviour before. The man was far too good to be caught.

A loud clatter sounded as across the room someone had knocked over a tray of empty mugs and paperwork, and the attention of the group was momentarily diverted. Renard took the opportunity to lower his head to Nick's ear. "I've sent a trusted courier to Monroe's with the other vial," he murmured, and straightened up before anyone was the wiser.

"Briefing in five," Renard then declared loudly to the room as he turned away, smoothly bringing everyone's attention onto police work.

...

Meanwhile, Monroe was seated in a shadowy side-booth at Hafen. He had decided to start with a strong black coffee as so far his morning had involved being awoken by a knock at the door from Renard's courier at 5am. After he stumbled through his house, stubbing a bare foot on the side of a table leg, he had retrieved the packaged vial and calmed himself with a warm breakfast of oats and honey. Lulled by the comfort food into thinking that his day was back on track, he had distracted himself around his house until Hafen's opening time came. He then made his way down to the bar only to find there were already a handful of Wesen regulars present and at least half of them were giving him dirty looks as he walked through the door. Monroe could only guess that the rumours of him betraying their kind by associating with a Grimm was the reason for the frosty reception.

This wasn't the day for attention though, so he ignored them and found himself the nice, dark booth he was currently settled in and prepared himself for a long wait.

It was mid afternoon by the time anything interesting happened. Before that only Wesen came into the bar, then chatted, drank or both, and left again. Occasionally humans would enter too, not knowing who or what they were among. At four o'clock though, a small group of human school girls came through the door, giggling amongst themselves as they were accompanied in by four Jagerbar boys.

Monroe's eyes narrowed as he calmly gave them his full attention. As he watched the interaction between the group, he soon realised that at most the Jagerbar boys had been unknowingly manipulated by the Schlafweber into bringing girls to the bar where they were now impressing them with stories about fairytale creatures. He would be able to smell more deceit or guilt on them otherwise. All he could smell were teenage hormones and it was putting him off his beer.

Out of the corner of his eye though, he saw movement in a shadowy corner on the far side of the bar to him. He was sure no one had been seated there and he had carefully assessed everyone who had entered the bar since it had opened that morning. He squinted his eyes, unsure if his mind was playing tricks with the lighting in the room. But no. There was something or someone there, but whatever it was it was difficult to concentrate on. It was almost as though it could shield its presence to some degree.

Monroe closed his eyes. They weren't any use to him now. He instead let the beast within to come to the surface as he breathed in one long, deep inhalation. Alcohol... sweat... humans... perfume... Wesen he already knew were there... And something else. Something soothing and dark. Monroe felt his mind calm as a wave of tiredness swept through him. Something sedating...

He snapped his eyes open and shook his head to clear himself of the dangerous scent. Letting himself morph back into his human form again made that easier as his sense of smell wasn't quite as powerful in that form. He reached quietly for his cell phone and dialled Nick's number.

"It's here," he whispered. "Dude, it's in the freakin' _bar_!"

"Calm down, it's okay!" Nick responded quickly, a little surprised by Monroe's reaction.

"Sorry, sorry," Monroe said, giving a full body shake to free himself of his nerves. "Think my imagination's getting the better of me. Though its scent... _woah_!" The horrified sound he made after those words make it clear to Nick that if even Monroe was taken off guard by being so close to it, then they had better be very careful with any approach they might take.

"I'll let Renard know," Nick said decisively. "Don't lose it – we'll be there as soon as we can. Don't move on it until we get there – it's strong."

He ended the call, leaving Monroe with a mild case of the nerves and a Schlafweber lurking on the other side of the room.

The Blutbad didn't have to wait long before their plan started to unravel. One of the school girls had started saying goodbye to her friends and the boys they were with, and was gathering up her bag ready to leave. The Schlafweber stirred. As the girl pushed open the bar door, sending a burst of sunlight into the room, Monroe stared into the darkness and gulped as he finally saw the creature's true form.

It was horrendous, made from smoke and shadows, needles jutting from the withered skin of its face and palms. Its body was huge, the human clothes it was wearing stretched tight over its torso, and its eyes were pools of black. Its mouth hung open slightly as it stared after the girl leaving, showing sharp needled teeth.

Monroe shivered. "Nasty," he gasped quietly.

A fraction of a second later the Schlafweber had morphed back into its human form – a nondescript man in his fifties – and rose from its booth, slowly and silently following the girl out of the bar.

"Oh, _crap_ ," Monroe swore, and he quickly dropped money next to his half-finished beer and hurried after it.

...

"It's on the move!" Monroe shouted into his phone as he again connected with Nick. "It's found its next victim!"

" _What_? Keep it in sight – we'll track your phone. We're on our way!" Nick responded, and hung up leaving Monroe to pocket his phone and shadow the Schlafweber at a careful distance as it followed the unsuspecting girl through busy streets filled with afternoon pedestrians.

It wasn't long before the girl turned into an apartment complex, the two Wesen not far behind her. When Monroe came through the sliding doors of the lobby he saw only the illuminated count of the elevator rising and without thinking he ran for the stairwell and pushed the door open, powering three steps at a time upward.

He let a small edge of his inner beast out, enough to give him extra strength and sharper hearing, and in the distance as he sped upward, he heard the sound of elevator doors opening two floors up. He increased his pace.

As Monroe burst out of the fifth floor landing, he spun his head to see the gentle click of an apartment door close near the end of the corridor to the left. He began running towards it but slowed down to a fast stride as a prying neighbour stuck her head out of her apartment door and glared at him suspiciously. He cast a distracted smile at her, aiming for reassurance but he suspected from her expression that he had achieved quite the opposite. At that moment though he had other priorities, and he slowed his pace to a halt as he reached his destination: the apartment of the soon-to-be dead school girl.

Monroe realised as he paused outside the door that he didn't have a plan, so, swearing under his breath at the risk he was about to take, he pushed his entire weight into the apartment door and felt the satisfying snap of splintered wood as it burst from its frame. The sight that greeted him made him glad he took the risk. Inside, in the centre of the living space was the Schlafweber leaning over the unconscious girl, its sharp teeth pressed into her prone hand. Its spindly head shot up at the crash of Monroe's entrance, and just as suddenly sound escaped the room, leaving a perfect moment of silence while the two Wesen stared each other down.

The Schlafweber broke first and gave a growl of frustration as though deciding it was not worth the fight as its plans had already been ruined. As Monroe leapt forward, the creature sped at lightening speed backwards, moving with an oddly smooth gait that had it powering through the glass of the window and, inhumanly, down the outside brick of the apartment wall. Monroe reached the now broken window and stuck his head through, staring down. The wall of the building looked over a side alley, and at the end of it he could see the Schlafweber turning calmly onto the main street, blending with the crowd as it walked away uninjured and unnoticed.

Except by the Blutbad. Monroe took a deep breath, shook his head at his own imminent madness as he looked down five floors to the cement pavement below, and leaped.

...

"On it," confirmed Wu into his police radio as he received a dispatch call about a disturbance at an apartment building only around the corner from where he now was. He had just finished speaking to the neighbours again from the original victims' apartment floor but to no avail. There were no new leads to be found. As he increased his pace, responding to the new call for assistance, he turned the corner in time to see out of the corner of his eye the sight of a huge figure dropping five floors out of a window down the alleyway across the street.

"What the–?" he exclaimed and began running, only to stop a pace later in shock as the man landed lightly on his feet on the pavement below. The figure appeared to crouch for a short moment and, curiously, sniff the wind, before straightening up and racing off towards the opposite end of the alley and into the street beyond.

Wu made a split-second decision and began chasing after the man, realising the apartment he jumped from must be the one the disturbance call came from. He reached for his radio and informed dispatch of his movements, requesting more officers instead to investigate the apartment itself while he was in pursuit of the suspect.

...

It was only a matter of minutes before the requested officers arrived to investigate the apartment, called in by the prying neighbour. They made their way carefully to the entrance, weapons drawn as they had noticed the splintered frame and gaping hole with the door should have been. They edged inside, one covering the other, quickly taking in the sight of the unconscious girl and returning to her only after a quick sweep of the apartment revealing no other occupant. One of the men checked her pulse. It was dangerously slow but still present. He called an ambulance and as he did so, his partner came over with a pale look on his face. He wordlessly handed over a note he had just found lying not far from the girl's body. The man took it and read:

_In the fifteenth year of her age_

_the princess shall prick herself_

_and shall fall down dead_

They looked at each other, realising immediately what this meant. Reaching for his police radio, the cop still holding the note contacted headquarters to report that their fairytale serial killer had struck again.

...

Nick was already in Renard's car when the call came through and they were speeding, sirens blazing, through the streets in the right direction. They had no intention of going to the apartment though as it was Monroe's GPS that they were following, and that was already streets away to the east of the scene of the attempted murder.

Monroe's signal slowed and halted soon after only a few blocks from where they were. Nick quickly dialled the Blutbad's number. "What's going on?" he asked, eager for an update. He saw Renard give a quick glance over so he transferred the call to speaker phone.

Monroe's voice was panting slightly on the other end of the line, but it was clear and coursing with what the Grimm inside Nick told him was the thrill of the hunt. "It's gone into an old building," Monroe reported quickly. "Some old abandoned mattress factory." There was a pause as he let that sink in. "A mattress factory for a sleep-weaver," he added wryly. "It probably feels right at home."

Nick chose to ignore the quip and only said, "We're nearly there – don't move until we arrive," as he ended the call.

The sirens came skidding around the corner in under a minute and shut off as soon as they located Monroe waving to get their attention. The street was quiet, full of deserted buildings and run-down shops, and the old brick mattress factory was set back from the road and surrounded by a tall wire fence. Luckily the fence was useless as it was full of holes and Monroe was already inside motioning at them impatiently from his hiding place behind a decrepit van a few feet from the building's door.

"Come on!" he yelled out to them. "I saw movement – it knows we're here!"

Nick and Renard hastened out of their car and sprinted over to their companion, unsure of the reason for the urgency. As they neared him they finally saw what he did –the building might have been old but the security had been upgraded and there were steel panels ready to shut down all access to the doors and windows at a moment's notice. If Monroe thought they had already spooked the Schlafweber then they were on borrowed time to make it inside the building before the creature reached wherever it kept the security controls and shut them out.

They burst their way through the entrance, Renard hearing a yell over his shoulder as he came through last. He only managing to turn his head and glimpse the slim figure of Sergeant Wu running up to the far fence before the steel panels came sliding down, blocking them effectively from the outside world. Thinking quickly, he dialled a number on his cell and was patched through to Wu's radio. "This is Captain Renard," he said authoritatively, as Nick and Monroe waiting quietly for him in the empty corridor inside. "I'm in here with Nick and we believe the suspect is too. The building's shut down tight – you'll need specialist equipment to get through. We're safe for now so call for back up and don't try to enter on your own."

"Yes, sir," replied Wu through the crackling reception. "Detective Griffin called in and is on his way. I'll let him know to take over when he arrives."

Renard gave his approval and ended the call. He looked over at Nick. "This steel barrier will work to our advantage," he said with calm logic. "We needed to stall for time to deal with this on our own, so the longer my men are trapped out there, the better."

Nick appreciated in that moment the fine line his captain and partner walked every day to keep the delicate balance between their worlds. "I agree," he said with a nod, and let the subject drop as they all turned to look at the corridor that they now found themselves inside.

It was as bleak as the outside of the factory. Dirt and dust covered the floors and sills, and paint was flecking off the walls. It was as though time had forgotten the place, the silence inside spreading emptiness into every available space.

The quiet was oppressive and they fought the urge not to speak as they were faced with the decision on which way to go. Two long side-corridors presented themselves from where they stood.

"Left," murmured Nick, and there was a moment when both Monroe and Renard wondered if he even knew he had spoken out loud.

"I agree," said Monroe, sniffing the air. "I can smell its scent." He looked at his friend curiously. "How do you know, though?"

Nick just shrugged, unsure how to answer. "I just do," he answered quietly, and they all knew what he meant. His Grimm abilities were sharpening.

Renard gave him a longer than usual stare but didn't say a word. For all his own immense network of spies and resources, the true secrets of the Grimms remained a secret to all but those who possessed them, and he found himself both cautious and curious of what might reveal itself within his new ally.

At the unspoken decision, they all turned left and began walking further into the depths of the building. The corridors remained the same – long stretches of dusty floors and closed doors, revealing nothing behind them but dirt and the signs of abandonment. They slowed their pace slightly as they came upon double doors to end the corridor they were travelling. They couldn't yet see through but the muffled sound of voices could be heard from beyond.

Nick put his hand on Monroe's arm to halt him as he turned his head to Renard with a questioning glance. Renard returned it, showing he also wasn't expecting anyone other than the Schlafweber on the other side of the doors. He steeled himself and walked up to the closed barrier and nudged quietly against the old metal hanging from its hinges to allow the smallest of peepholes into the inner room. There were a few tense seconds as he didn't speak a word but both Nick and Monroe felt the wave of anger and tension flood through the man.

As Renard carefully let the door close again, Nick whispered, "What?"

Renard let out a low grumble, half growl. "It's in there," he said. "And so are a dozen other Wesen."

Nick gave a hissed intake of breath, and the significance was not missed on him or Monroe. "Traitors," muttered the Blutbad darkly.

"Traitors," agreed Renard, steel in his voice. He turned his head to look at Nick. "Stay here for now," he said, and when Nick began to protest he motioned for the man to allow him to finish. "It wants to usurp me with this mutiny so I will do what I can to quell it. I don't want to reveal my hand too soon though," he said significantly, "and you are the weapon I'd rather save for the right moment."

Nick nodded as he saw the wisdom in the decision though he hated to wait. The Grimm inside him was calling for blood. "Good luck," he said, and extended his hand to grasp Renard's own in a moment of solidarity.

He did the same to Monroe who was ready to follow his chosen king, his eyes already instinctively red with anticipation of the impending conflict.

They all gave one last look at each other, and without saying another word, Renard and Monroe pushed open the double doors and strode boldly into the large, open room full of Wesen waiting for their blood.

...

The Schlafweber was in the centre of the group in its true form. There was no reason to hide and it wanted them all to realise the threat and power it could hold. The traitor Wesen that stood beside it were in awe as the beast from their legends was now flesh and blood and fighting to lead them.

"We meet again, Captain," greeted the Schlafweber, a cruel smile on its needled face as it deliberately chose not to use Renard's royal title. "Shall I break your bones as I did last time we fought?"

The demeaning insult did not go without comment and the surrounding Wesen chuckled in derision, their courage boosted by the presence of their chosen champion.

Renard was not one to intimidate easily though and he strode forward, head held regally as he stared icily at the traitors until they wilted and fell silent. "I'm surprised you noticed my broken bones as you turned so quickly and fled..." he replied smoothly.

Monroe, standing a few paces back, gave a small smile of satisfaction as he saw a flash of annoyance cross the Schlafweber 's twisted face.

"Your words are useless," spat the Schlafweber, eager to come to its true challenge. It suddenly turned and swept its gaze over its new followers. "My loyal ones," it declared loudly, "I have brought you all here today as history is about to change." It made a sinister turn of its head and a raise of its bony arm in the direction of Renard. "I am here to kill your king."

The nervous energy in the room snapped and the Wesen traitors lost whatever hold they had on their human guises and morphed into their true forms, growling, baying, and screeching their native tongues in challenge.

Monroe strode forward to stand directly beside Renard, making it clear whom he sided with. There was a low growl coming from the back of his throat, and Renard said nothing but put a hand on his companion's arm to still him. Losing control now would be unwise.

"Your king is weak!" shouted the Schlafweber, and the vicious encouragement from its followers buoyed its words. "Your very anonymity has been threatened and you are no longer safe. The humans of your city are near to finding out about our existence and they will hate us and hunt us. This 'king' of yours has not been able to protect you. Even his human citizens doubt his ability to protect them from the menace spreading fear in his own territory!"

Monroe felt anger boil inside him and the beast inside him pawed at the door to his mind. The Schlafweber 's speech was inciting its followers into madness and bloodlust, and in turn the creature itself was being propelled by their frenzy. Monroe growled again and turned his head to Renard, looking for permission to propel himself into battle. It was not often anymore that he allowed himself to let go – to let the beast within have complete reign – but now was a time when he knew he would have no regrets. None at all.

Yet, Renard's expression gave him reason to pause. The man was not angry as Monroe would have assumed. There was a sharp glint in his eyes like he knew he had already won, and Monroe didn't have to wait long to find out why. The Wesen king deliberately ignored the Schlafweber, refusing to give it power, and instead addressed its followers in a low, strong voice.

"The menace that is threatening your safety, your anonymity, is none other than the Schlafweber you now so blindly follow," he declared. "It has risen from its sleep and yet knows nothing of our world. It has murdered seven humans, leaving mention of our existence at each crime scene, and it has made sure the public were told. _That_ is how it has chosen to challenge me – by endangering you all."

The room had fallen deathly silent and Renard could see doubt creep over the Schlafweber's twisted face. It had been too bold and let pride propel it into words that the king now used against it. It was not used to politics and subtlety. It was from a long gone age when blood and nightmares were the making of leaders. Wesen hadn't ever questioned its actions before; they had only blindly and fearfully followed.

The Schlafweber let its fury rally its cause and darkness spread from its very skin, shadowing the room and sending shivers of primal terror through its doubting followers. "They follow me until death," it scorned as it stared at Renard in anger. "They are mine and they will fight for me and they will destroy you." The Wesen surrounding it were subdued by their old king's words, but their new leader commanded them and they were not stupid. They knew they had chosen their side and they must defend it if they had any hope of survival. "There are only two of you," continued the Schlafweber mockingly as it eyed Renard and Monroe. "I can sense your strength but it is no match for the numbers on my side."

Renard just shrugged as though the odds skewed against him were a mild annoyance, nothing more. "Your followers aren't warriors anywhere near the league of myself and the Blutbad that stands with me. You will not find the competition so biased as you may wish," he concluded, silently readying himself for the impending battle. "And anyway," he added, as though it was a mere afterthought, "you don't have a Grimm on your side."

Nick, who had been listening on tenterhooks through the door, took his queue. The shock that greeting not only Renard's bold claim but also the Grimm's arrival as Nick pushed open the doors and strode into the room were enough to scare even the boldest of the traitors.

Even the Schlafweber itself took moment to pause. It was sure it had considered all eventualities, but a _Grimm_? Not only was there one in Portland but he sided with the local Wesen king? It let out a deafening roar of rage and frustration. " _ATTACK THEM_!" it screamed, letting its base nature take over, ignoring the fear that stabbed through it at the unexpected turn of events.

The Wesen attacked. They were full of panic and frayed emotion and they charged forward, most trying to avoid Nick as primal memories deep down told them to keep far away from the Grimm. But that left only the powerful king they so publically betrayed, and the strong and aggravated Blutbad that stood side by side with him. Sheer numbers might have been in their favour but the attacking Wesen knew instinctively that there was no guaranteed win.

The battle began as the traitors launched themselves on Monroe and Renard, claws of varying shapes extended, unnaturally sharp teeth gaping wide. Nick saw his companions brace themselves in the split second before they were lost from sight behind the push of attacking bodies.

_An unwise move_ , spoke the memory of Nick's ancestors within him. _They should never have turned their back on a Grimm_. He closed his eyes for one moment of complete stillness as he took a long breath and let go, giving himself completely to his inheritance. As Nick's lids reopened, he felt the room thrum with the presence of each and every Wesen, and he felt his own power flood through him unrestrained. The smallest of smiles crossed his face as he leaped suddenly forward into the fray, using only his bare hands to grab at the outlying Wesen and throwing them with unnatural strength backward across the room. Two more he disposed of in the same manner before he managed to catch a glimpse of Monroe and Renard almost back to back as they fought with a viciousness and skill that left him awed at their uninhibited ability.

His attention was quickly distracted as a reptilian creature launched at him, mouth gaping wide and jaw unhinged to an unnatural angle. Nick felt for his hidden blade without thinking and pulled it from its sheath, plunging it directly into the creature's heart. The blade sank in without resistance, killing instantly. Without a second's pause, Nick spun around and saw the Schlafweber joining the ferocious fight, isolating Renard from the main battle as it pounced on the king, sending him crashing to the floor.

Renard recovered quickly and grappled with the beast fiercely as it attempted to slice into his skin with its needled hands. He gained some ground, sending a brutal punch into the creature's jaw causing it to stumble backwards in pain. Renard pushed his advantage, falling on top of the Schlafweber as he grabbed at a fallen blade lying close and thrust it downward towards the creature's heart. He missed. The creature screeched, an inhuman noise, and grabbed hold of Renard's wrist, stopping the blade's downward descent. Needles dug into the king's arms and Renard winced, eyes widening as he realised the poison that was fed through those slender spikes would soon inject into his system. He couldn't let go through as he felt his mind cloud and drowsiness flood through his veins as the fatal sedative took its effect. He felt himself being flipped over onto the floor, the Schlafweber now on top of him, his own blade having twisted around and was now being forced towards his own heart. He tried to fight the poison in his body but he was losing fast and his strength was fading as a sharp jolt of pain signalled the tip of the blade had reached his skin. He closed his eyes unwillingly, wanting to fight but barely able to move. He felt a massive jolt against him, and for a moment he thought it was the blade entering his body, but when darkness didn't claim him he managed to force enough strength to open his eyes. Above him stood Nick, his Grimm shining through as both hands gripped the blade that he had just thrust to the hilt into the base of the Schlafweber's neck.

The creature was dead. For a moment Renard's clouded brain was confused, trying to understand how it could be killed by pure steel when he finally looked over the Schlafweber's unmoving shoulder and saw the flecks of powdered petals falling from the blade's handle and imbedded into the fatal wound. Nick has smeared his blade with Königlicher Kuss before he had plunged it into the Schlafweber's neck. The Grimm was clever, Renard thought groggily.

The world seemed to have quietened as the moment of the kill took place, but slowly Renard found his mind clearing and he realised that the poison in his system must have been rendered powerless upon the death of its producing body. A small mercy, he thought quietly as he slowly pulled himself up to his elbows to see where the fight stood elsewhere.

It had stopped. The moment that Nick had plunged the blade into the Schlafweber, the battle was over. The remaining Wesen that Monroe had not taken out were starting to raise their hands in a gesture of defeat. They were beaten and they knew it, and the fear in their eyes spoke that they knew their true king would show them no mercy.

They were wrong. Renard's strength had nearly fully returned, and he rose to his feet and stood facing them, his breathing only slightly hastened after the adrenaline of the fight. "You expect to die, and I would be within my rights to kill you," Renard declared coldly and they flinched at his words. "But there have been enough deaths of late, and I am not that kind of ruler. I don't kill for the sake of it. I will protect my subjects and I will ensure a peaceful balance is upheld in my city." He paused to look at them with dark significance. "You will re-pledge your allegiance to me. My authority is final and we will speak of this no more," he said. "But I will demand this of you: You will never reveal my partnership with the Grimm. You disobey me and I will see reason for you to die, and have no doubt that it is this very Grimm that will hunt you down."

As one, the disgraced Wesen turned their eyes to Nick. He was still standing with the bloodied blade in his hand over the body of the dead Schlafweber and his expression told that he was in no mood to be tested. A collective shiver ran through them all and they found themselves nodding reflexively, each dropping on one knee and proclaiming their sworn allegiance to their king. Renard nodded abruptly, accepting their words and with that the battle was truly over.

...

The distant sound of a loud metallic crash signified that the outer door to the warehouse had finally been breached by the Portland Police. It would not be long before cops would swarm the room and Renard knew he had only a moment to reconstruct the truth of what had taken place in the room he now stood in.

"Rise," he commanded to the disgraced Wesen, and they hastened to their feet again, eager to please their king. "In a moment my men will reach this room and when they do you will allow them to arrest you."

The Wesen looked scared but didn't dare speak.

"Today, a serial killer with delusions about fairytale creatures died," said Renard carefully as he spun a new tale for the attentive room. "You," he continued, nodding to the Wesen before him, "will be arrested for aggravated assault of a police officer and conspiracy to commit a crime as my report will read that while you didn't know the serial killer's true intentions, you did know he was planning violent action and you were prepared to join him."

The Wesen realised this was their punishment. They would most likely serve time in a human prison, but they all knew without a doubt that the punishment could have been far worse. They were lucky to be offered what they were, and they all nodded and bowed their heads in defeat.

Renard, pleased with the final quelling of the rebellion, turned his head quickly to Monroe. "Hide now," he urged. "My men can't find your here as I can't explain your presence."

Monroe had already come to the same conclusion. He was only superficially injured, with most of the blood on him not his own. He gave one final glance at the few Wesen bodies lying still on the ground as he wondered absently whether they were dead or unconscious, and turned to run towards one of the few side doors that could lead to a temporary hiding place.

It was only a few heartbeats later that an armed contingent of the Portand police force charged through the double doors. They came to a halt just as suddenly as they had entered and took in the scene that greeted them. Their captain stood calmly in the centre of the room, Nick by his side, and a sorry looking group of men huddled defeated a few feet away. There were bodies on the floor – a few clearly dead, the others injured to varying degrees.

It was Hank that came forward, unsure whether to holster his gun or not. "Captain...?" he asked, unsure how to finish his sentence.

"We're fine," said Renard with a quick nod towards Nick. "The killer is dead," he continued, motioning over to the dead Schlafweber now returned to human form on the floor. "Everyone else you can arrest."

The next hour seemed to blur around Nick and Renard as they watched the dead and injured being carried away while the disgraced Wesen were read their rights and taken off to the station. Nick felt like his world was slowly retracting back to usual after the power of the Grimms had overtaken him and expanded every part of his cells, his soul, and driven strength and knowledge through him like he had never experienced before.

"You okay?" Hank asked of his partner when he had finished directing Sergeant Wu to have forensics finish sweeping the scene. There was barely anyone left on scene now, with most of the activity now over.

Nick nodded, hating to lie to his friend but knowing that was a decision he had already made a while ago and there was no wisdom in changing it now. "Yeah," he sighed. "I'm fine." He let a small smile curve up his lips. "Been a hell of a day, though," he admitted.

Hank let out a short laugh. "You can say that again," he replied. "Oh, and by the way, the girl will be just fine."

It took Nick a few moments to realise what his partner was referring to, but of course before the Wesen battle the Schlafweber had attacked its chosen third girl and left her heavily sedated in her apartment when Monroe had interrupted them. "Good, I'm glad," Nick said, meaning it, relief in his voice.

"Detective Griffin."

Hank turned his head to see it was Captain Renard addressing him, and at the same time noticing that Wu and the last of the forensics team had now also left. "Sir?" he asked, awaiting instruction.

"I'd like you to go to the hospital now that the girl is more recovered and see if you can take a statement from her," Renard said. "Good work today," he added, his eyes softening in approval of his detective's work.

"Thank you, sir." Hank, feeling boosted by the compliment, gave Nick a final nod of farewell and turned to leave the room.

...

Monroe came out of hiding when he was sure the other detective had left, leaving only Nick and Renard in the strange calm of the aftermath. Only the bloodstains on the floor attested to the recent violence and confrontation of not so long ago.

There was a few moments while they all stood together, facing each other, none speaking. The events of that day had changed them all, and Wesen history had changed with them. Nick felt a new power within himself which was no longer a mystery or half out of his reach. He understood what he was now – he was not only a Grimm with the power of his ancestors, but he was something else – something new. He was a partner, an equal to the Wesen king that stood beside him, and together they would ensure peace and balance in both the worlds they inhabited. And Monroe, he was part of their team too – Nick's closest friend and a solid ally for Renard. He was solitary by choice but integral to mediate the line between the Wesen and the two men that now watched over them.

"We don't make a half bad team," said Monroe, as he broke the silence. There was a pleased look on his face.

Nick nodded. "A Blutbad, a Grimm and a King," he smiled, eyes still sparkling from the adrenaline of the fight.

"Yes," said Renard, thinking back to the body of the defeated creature as he calmly met the gaze of his companions. "And no one will dare disturb the balance again." The hidden beast behind his eyes roared, and Nick breathed in deeply as he felt his own instinct catch wind of the king's true nature and flood thousand-year-old thrills and unformed memories into his very soul.

**The End**


End file.
